Define French Fry
On our way to a soccer game, my wife and I stopped at a favorite but rarely visited burger place in Portland. The burgers are pretty good, but the fries are varied and special. You can choose from several kinds of potatoes (including purple, which was our choice for the night) and a wider variety of dipping sauces. As we dug through our mound of potato goodness I unearthed a potato. It felt like those times you find an onion ring in your fries at Burger King (only there, never happens anywhere else), except dialed up to eleven. On the small side, but a whole tater. It was indeed fried, but does frying alone make a fry?Well, Oxford defines a French fry this way:
Noun: a thin strip of deep-fried potato.
And there is my answer. This uncut spud is not in fact a fry. Two things prevented me from complaining that day. First, we were already almost full before we even found the offending tuber. Second, I was laughing too hard at the silliness of it to muster much righteous indignation. Oh well, no use getting salty over it.I went for a walk the other day based on a weather report giving me plenty of time to get back home before the rain. My soaked clothes called the weather man a liar.Years ago while working in a bank, I got called into my manager's office. Sure it was something bad, my stomach fell and my nerves railed. A new branch was opening and they wanted me to join the team to staff the new location. My smile called my gut a liar.This Sunday I get to preach from a fun passage in Ecclesiastes:
Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.Ecclesiastes 9:11 ESV
One of the disruptive things about life is our complete inability to predict every outcome. It is what makes sports fun, finances stressful, and relationships challenging (and worth having). The more I learn, the more I value the potatoes in my fries. Not all surprises are good, but they aren't all bad either.One more reason to loosen my grip and trust God to lead. No sense complaining to life's manager when the next accident may very well be the blessing we've waited for.