Wool Socks No Match for Snow (Updated)

I am wearing a new pair of wool socks I got for Christmas from my in-laws. On spec, they are awesome. They are both woolly without being itchy, fairly fashionable (well, maybe not), and when I put them on first thing in the AM it is like my feat are wearing a blanket. Overall pretty great. Thanks Steve & Barbara!

I wanted the socks for days like today. Columbus is covered in snow. A white blanket covers just about every surface and there is no avoiding it. Because (for whatever reason) I don't own "working" snow boots/shoes, I thought the wool socks would be a fine insulation choice to the unavoidable snow covered shoes that boast no real winter protection. For three days I have worn them in very cold but not snowy weather & they were great. Enter the snow, and as I type my feat are both damp & cold. I bet you saw that coming.

The truth of the matter is sometimes things don't work out how you planned. My socks/shoe situation is a minor example. My best laid plans of warm woolly socks were sunk by the larger, real issue of crummy winter shoes. I got what I wanted & it didn't work out. Life, like the socks, were no match for snow and terrible shoes. Getting what we want and life still being difficult is a hallmark of being human.

If I really wanted dry, warm feet socks aren't where I should have invested. As quick fixes go, socks were the logical choice. Affordable, easy to obtain, and requiring very little if any commitment, I got what I wanted but what I wanted wasn't what I really needed. What I need are winter shoes - high quality, dependable, most likely expensive winter shoes that will keep my feet warm and dry. Requiring effort, finding the right "fit" isn't going to be cheap, easy, or immediate but in the end my money, time and patience will be rewarded.

By now I hope you realize that I am really not talking about socks and shoes. As Jim Collins pointed out in Good to Great the enemy of great is good, and in our case the enemy of what you need is often what you want. How often does this play out in our daily lives? Diets busted because we want a cheeseburger. Sobriety busted because we want a glass of scotch like our friends. Relationships severed because we use our friends to get what we want. Want and need may be one in the same from time to time but to equate them in all things is ultimately destructive.

Because I am a Pastor and not a psychologist, let me end this with an observation. In our celebration of Communion/Lord's Supper we pray something called the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving. As you might have guessed, it is a prayer about thanking God, and as the title suggests it is a "great thanks" and not a short nod to the Man Upstairs (also God isn't a Man but you know what I am talking about). In this prayer we thank God for faithfulness across generations despite the many and varied times we have sought our own wants over the plan God has laid out for us. We thank God for not stopping with the Ten Commandments, or the Judges, or the Prophets, or Kings - all things we ran from to follow our own wants - and we thank God for sending Jesus into the world as the ultimate reconciling act of a loving God. We thank God for what we needed (Jesus/Reconciliation) when all we could recognize is what we wanted (control).

This Great Prayer of Thanksgiving is said before the Communion Table. A table where we celebrate the life of grace found in God's steadfast love. When we wanted socks God gives us shoes.