Sunday, November 4, 2007

The Job That Keeps On Giving

(this is about last weekend, not yeserday)

So my last two weeks have been consumed with pretty much one thing only – The Reklaw Fly-In at the Flying M Ranch. First, a fly-in is where a bunch of guys with planes fly into some small private airport, hang out for some period of time, and fly home. At this fly in, a bigger one, people come and hang out for 3 days and then go home. It 2 hours southwest of Dallas. So my plan was to take pictures of the 400 planes as they landed and took off.

I spent all last week getting ready. Including buying some new equipment. I got all the computers working and talking to each other at home perfectly. The plan was for me to head up Friday afternoon to take some test shots and get everything prepped. Then, everyone else would come up Friday night and spend the night so we could be there early Saturday morning. However, because my package was delievered over 2 horus late on Friday, and then Kinkos didn’t have my order ready when they said they would, I ended up leaving the house 6 hours late and went straight to the hotel. But that was ok. All the bad stuff was happening on Friday so Saturday would come off without a hitch.

I wish.

I arrived and set up and the computers would not talk to each other. This killed everything. I cant show the pictures to the people if they don’t talk to each other. Therefore, I took 10,000 pictures and sold 5. Yah. A big bust. A huge bust. I lost a ridiculous amount of money (paying people and getting equipment and stuff).

However, I decided to persevere through it. I got home and starting sorting the pictures (yes, all 10,000 of them) to put them on the internet so people could order them. That took till Wednesday. Thursday I spend updating the pictures and reuploading the ones that got deleted. So far I have received 2 orders bringing in $120. So I am still in the hole in a VERY bad way…

So… now for the back end of this. I am ok with the whole thing. I trust God. He is good. All the time. He is always good in every situation every time without fail. I know this. I may not feel it right now, but I know it. And I’m not freaked out about losing so much money. I know that God will provide. He will not let his beloved son starve. He has always given me such amazing gifts, why would he stop now.

This is definitely an improvement. A couple of years ago, I would have yelled at God for this. I would have griped and complained. However, I think he has grown me. He has matured me so that my faith is bigger. I trust him.

Its good, but still not where it will be. I look forward to the time when I could lose everything, my wife, family, ministry, job, house, kids, money, camo hat… everything, and still fall on my knees in worship of my Savior. He gave me the ultimate gift. Who am I to complain when he takes away something temporal?

Well… that’s about it.. it pleases me that I’m maturing. So hows your walk going? Hows life?

2 comments:

Katanna said...

Sorry to break your rant, but YOU didn't sort 10,000 photos, I sorted 7,000 of them!

But other than that, if you loose $100 or $10,000, really, who cares? If you keep your mind on eternal goals and not worldly goals, then you see that money means nothing in the long run. Remember that you can't bring gold into heaven (but you can bring it into WoW...).

Matthew

Sara said...

BUSTED!

roflmao...

Just because I'm worldly like that - I have a slightly different facet on your perspective. Yes, it's true that God provides and takes care of you no matter what. While I'm certainly not denying the absence of grace, we as humans have free will, and I don't believe that God beats provision into us if we consistently make bad choices. I'm not saying that you're making bad choices - I'm just putting a little plug in that making smart and informed business decisions may help you cut back on some of these big losses.

I don't know if this is particularly helpful or if I'm just popping off before I've had my coffee. All I'm saying is that there's more than one factor, being God's provision, in this equation.

I'm going to drink my coffee now.