It can only be Good or Bad

I love LaSalle Street Church. On Saturday I hated Chicago Transit Authority and Apple. Here's the context:

I just bought an ipod touch. (Yes, I worshiped at the throne of Consumerism, and it was good. More on this later.) I bought it mostly because of the Calendar feature, so it works as a PDA sort of device, which I have needed recently. I got it home on Friday and it wouldn't let me add events. So I took it in to Apple to get it fixed, and now I can add events. But then, on the train down south to head to another store, it wouldn't play music. Needless to say, I was PISSED. Then it went from bad to worse. The train I was on stopped. For 2.5 hours. Stuck. Going NOWHERE! During that time my ipod started playing music again, but I was stuck on a train, not getting to go to dinner with a friend I haven't hung out with in a long time. This was a BAD day. Period. CTA was dumb. Apple was stupid. CTA employees, were even dumber and more useless. Everything was BAD.

Then there was church on Sunday. First Sunday of Advent. Great times. Pastor Laura spoke about how we like to think that we would have recognized Jesus, since we would have been looking for him. Then she reminded us that those that he came to that didn't recognize him or receive him (John 1:10-11) were probably MORE religious, devout, and Messiah expecting people than we are. They had been waiting for centuries for the Messiah, he came to 'his own' and they still didn't get it. Laura said that we probably wouldn't have either. Shoot, she's probably right. Then she continued to talk about how we like to put everything in categories like Good and Bad. Not gray, blue, red, off-white, semi-good, redeemable, etc. Nope, just Good and Bad. My first thought was, "I'm glad I'm better than that. I'm Postmodern." My second thought was, "Yesterday was a BAD day." Strike two for Devin.

The Jews of Jesus day decided that they had the Messiah figured out. Never mind that they had never met him. They knew who he was and who he wasn't. Then they missed him. I know how things should work and when I experience a bad day. I had good intentioned plans for the day that didn't happen. It would have been a good thing to reconnect with a friend, spend some time cleaning up the apartment, and hopefully some time resting. It didn't happen. That was bad. And since I decided it was bad and stayed on that, there was probably some bush on fire somewhere the size of Manhattan that wasn't burning up. I missed it for the dead bushes that I saw all around it that were bad. Strike three...