perfect

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Perfect Timing Is Always Amazing When It Happens

There is something about perfect timing that’s, well, just perfect.

perfect timing is always amazing when it happens

We use that phrase “perfect timing” when something happens at just the right time, or in every and any situation that presents itself as working out. 

When a baseball player leaps at the warning track and catches the baseball as it’s going over the fence, we say that’s perfect timing. 

When you show up at a restaurant and are first in line to be seated and look back to notice a large line up forming behind you, you say to yourself, “We got here at the perfect time!”

Even when my wife, Lily, is ready to leave the house at the same time I am, I think it’s perfect timing. … That doesn’t occur very often so it is even more remarkable when it does happen.

And maybe that’s why we notice something when it happens at just the right time. It’s not a regular occurrence. Rather, it is more of a one-off, something that only happens from time to time. 

I remember years ago when our daughter was little and she was bouncing on the couch right beside me. I was looking across the room, talking to Lily, when out of the corner of my eye I saw Karlie bounce right over the arm rest of the couch. 

Without looking, I reached out and caught her by the ankle as she was diving head first toward the floor. 

That was perfect timing, and all I could say to Lily was, “Did you see that catch? Did you see that catch? It was perfect!”

Well, the other day I was driving home from our cottage. I was about a half hour into my five hour drive, when I got a call from our son. He was in Kingston and was going to be leaving to go home to Toronto. 

I had to pass through Toronto on my way home so he suggested that if it worked out, we should meet for dinner along the route between Kingston and Toronto. We agreed to check in when it got closer to the time he was going to leave Kingston. 

I continued on my trip for three plus hours. I had to go through Toronto … which is always a wild card. I got stuck in stop and go traffic from the west end to the middle of the city before things started moving again. 

I was on track to get home at about 7 pm without any stops.

So I called Mike once I got through the traffic, but could only leave a message. When he called back, I told him approximately when I would be passing through the next three cities before I got home. 

We decided he could make it to Belleville around the time I would be getting there, which was still a good 45 minutes from where I was at that moment. 

I figured that one of us would get there and just have to wait ten or fifteen minutes for the other one. 

Well, I rolled into the restaurant parking lot, stepped out of my car, checked something in the trunk, and turned around to see Mike pulling into the lot.  

Perfect timing! Being that far away, coming from opposite directions and arriving under two minutes apart was amazing. 

Here’s the thing: Perfect timing is when two things come together at just the right time. When God answers your prayer, or speaks to you through a verse, or when you become aware of who God is, that’s perfect timing. Pay attention to it and be amazed.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: Recently, what has happened perfectly for you? Leave your comments and questions below.

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A Near Perfect Installation

It was almost a perfect installation … except for the leak.

We have been having issues with our laundry room taps for some time. But for me, they are out of the way and rarely used, so I didn’t see it as a priority to deal with.

Recently, however, Lily put a bucket under the faucet and I couldn’t believe how fast the water filled the bucket even with the taps turned off. 

I knew we needed to do something, but the taps were over 20 years old and I’m not a plumber. 

My wife, Lily, found a really nice utility sink cabinet combo that also included a set of taps. So I threw caution to the wind and decided to try to install that bad boy.

One thing really surprised me about the old dripping taps was that when we would turn the taps on, it always seemed like the water was coming from some far away place, like the street or Lake Ontario. 

You would turn the taps on and then wait. You would hear the sound of something in the distance coming from the taps and it would get louder and louder before the water showed up at the spout. 

By then you had turned the taps to full, so the water came out like a rocket. 

“If the water is so far away,” I wondered, “how could the leaky tap now fill a bucket so fast?”

That’s a mystery – like who shot JFK – that will never be solved. I just have to let it go. 

The install of the new sink unit went pretty well. Lily helped with the measuring and I cut pipes to fit. 

I did not get one cut straight. I’m not sure how the pros do it. Maybe I got excited near the end of each cut and pressed harder, which in turn turned the blade of the saw just a little.

I was concerned about it, but all the pieces fit together. I was sure happy when it was done.

I put a bucket in the sink to test the taps and they worked like a dream. I wasn’t going to let any water go down the drain until the glue had dried so I waited 24 hours before testing it all out. 

The water came out beautifully and immediately. This time there was no going for a coffee before the water appeared.  

I opened the cabinet up and looked at all the drain work we had done. I thought everything was good. 

But then I saw a bead of water start to drip. And as the taps ran, it dripped more until there was a little puddle of water on the base of the new cabinet.

I knew right then that I would never become a plumber. 

The question was, “What went wrong?” Was it my crooked cuts? Was it the fact that the drain wasn’t 100% straight up and down? 

… Maybe a combination of both.  

All I know is that most of my attention was on what’s under the sink and not what everyone sees.

Here’s the thing: We all like to look good on the outside, and we spend a lot of time and effort creating and maintaining a public image. But before your public image has any credibility, what’s on the inside needs to be made right. Make sure you spend more time with God getting your inner life right than you do trying to make your public image look good. Your inner life will drive what people see. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What part of your inner life do you need to spend time on? Leave your comments below.

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The Perfect Match Is A Myth

I think it’s a myth that two people can be a perfect match. I don’t think two people can ever be perfect together. 

Do you remember the old fairy tale of Goldilocks and the three bears? In that story, Goldilocks stumbled into the bears’ house and tested out several things in the house: three bowls of porridge, three chairs and three beds. 

Each time she discovered that the little bowl, chair and bed was “just right”. 

This story is so far from reality, no wonder it’s a fairy tale! … Forget the three talking bears, and the fact that they lived in a house, made and ate porridge, sat in chairs and slept in beds. That wasn’t the wild fantasy. 

The real fantasy was that some of that stuff was “just right” to Goldilocks! 

That doesn’t happen in real life. There is never a perfect fit. 

We can get close, but it will never be perfect. 

I’ve been married for 33 years now and you would think that my wife and I would become more and more of a perfect match over the years. 

Not so. 

Recently there have been two glaring examples how we are not a perfect fit. 

The first example is with clothing. You would think that by now if Lily asked me to comment on her outfit that I would be able to tell her what I thought and it would help.

It doesn’t. 

I don’t know how to comment on her outfits. If I say it looks really nice, I may have said it too quickly or without looking at her long enough to make an informed decision. Maybe my facial expression wasn’t quite congruent with the comment I was making. 

At any rate, whatever I say it is not “just right”. 

There is no perfect fit here. 

And then yesterday, Lily and I were walking across a parking lot to enter a store and she exclaimed, “I can never figure out how we can walk together.” 

She was walking fast and trying to adjust to my slower pace. Sometimes, however, she has a hard time keeping up with me. 

Lily just wants us to be able to walk together at the same pace, but it’s never “just right”.

I’m not trying to move out of step with her; my stride just changes with where I’m walking to, and the purpose of our walk.

For instance, yesterday we were walking into a store. I can’t tell you how unexcited I was about doing that. Thinking about shopping makes me tired, so I’m not walking too fast into that. 

On the other hand, earlier in the day we were going for a walk in a park and Lily was having a hard time keeping up.  

For the record, at the time, I didn’t know she was working hard to keep up with me.

In that instance I was looking forward to getting out of the heat, so my mind was set on getting through it with few delays.

You see, we are not a “perfect” fit. It’s never “just right”. … but we’re really good together!

Here’s the thing: When you are evaluating your church, or your small group, or maybe the ministry you serve in, don’t evaluate it for a perfect fit. It’ll never be “just right”. Don’t wait for God to make it perfect or bring something perfect along. Trust Him to make you good together. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: With whom have you found you are good together? Leave your comments below.

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It Was Perfect Timing

Nothing is really perfect, but this week I experienced perfect timing. 

Perfect timing is a moment in time when different things come together with an incredible result. 

You could say it’s perfect timing when you take a picture of a sunset and a seagull flies in front of the setting sun just as you snap the shot. 

You could also say it’s perfect timing when two people see a Volkswagen Beetle and, at the same time, scream “punch buggy!” It doesn’t happen often these days, but there was a time when you could end up with a bruised arm or leg because of those words. 

… If you didn’t understand that last sentence, just ask a child of the 50’s or 60’s about it. 

Perfect timing is a marvel; it’s like you scored a goal, or set a new record. Perfect timing is one of those things that causes you to say, “Hey, did you see that?” 

A story of something that is perfectly timed has to be told. It’s not something you just forget about and move on from. 

No, perfect timing is legend material.

This year at the beginning of spring I knew we needed a new lawn mower. I had a hard time starting it, and it was rusting out … to the point that you could see through a section of the deck to where the blade was spinning. 

I had hoped we could get a little more action out of it, but the next time I used it, the mower was even harder to start. And once I got it going, it seemed really old … like an old dog that needs a little assistance to jump up onto the couch, or an old man who seems to be walking in slow motion. 

This mower just wasn’t cutting it any more.

But since it’s the mower for the cottage, I didn’t want to have to buy a new one. After all, my grass only takes me seven minutes to cut. 

The next time we were there, I tried – for longer than it would have taken me to cut the grass – to get that engine to turn over. I couldn’t get it going at all.

I told Lily that I thought the mower was dead, and that we needed to get another one. I looked on Kjiji but there was nothing. I looked for repair shops that sold used lawnmowers but didn’t turn up any results. 

We were just going to have to be on the lookout. 

About an hour later, Lily and I headed out to do a grocery run. We passed a house where a guy was rolling out a lawnmower to the end of his driveway. 

I said, “Hey Lil, look at that!” and hit the brakes. I turned the car around and pulled into the driveway before the man had even walked back to his house. 

We asked him if it worked well, he replied, “Give it a pull.” It started immediately.

I threw that lawnmower in the back of our SUV and handed him forty bucks – no sense haggling over that price!

I’m sure the only thing the guy was ticked about was that he went to the trouble of making a “for sale” sign to stick on it.

That’s perfect timing!

Here’s the thing: Lil and I had prayed that God would provide an inexpensive replacement for our mower. Within an hour, one guy was marching one out to the end of his driveway. Perfect timing is when you seek God for something and He delivers an answer. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What answer have you received that was perfect timing? Leave your comments below.

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I’m Not Becoming Perfect From My Practice

I realized something about myself the other day: practice doesn’t alway make perfect.

You know the saying. It’s often used to get people to work at something until they improve. I think there are a lot of things this applies to in life, but writing is not one of them – at least not for me.

When I work on my sermon, sometimes I will stand up and work on a white board in my office. I will walk around, pacing back and forth while I think, and then jot things down with my erasable marker.

I’ve been doing this for a while now, but it dawned on me that I’m not getting any better at it. I mean my writing is not any neater or easier to read than it was when I started this method.

If practice makes perfect, why am I not writing perfect “A’s” or “S’s”? My letters still slide into and up against each other. Sometimes I don’t close them off; sometimes I don’t even make a good attempt at forming the letters at all.

It sometimes makes for difficulty reading, though my wife, Lily, and I are pretty used to it and can figure my writing out with only a little frustration at times.

I know there is another saying that someone came up with … probably someone like me who ran into the contradiction with their own handwriting. That person said, “Perfect practice makes perfect.”

I don’t like that phrase very much because the whole idea of practicing is that we aren’t perfect yet. Maybe “proper practice makes perfect” is a better saying.

I can live with that one because clearly I don’t practice my writing properly.

But you know, I’ve found many things in life that also don’t stand up to this nice little slogan. For instance, I’ve been playing the guitar for years, but I’m not significantly better than I was ten years ago.

I also don’t practice very much, but that’s because I don’t see much progress or perfection taking shape when I do practice.

There are some people who practice driving and they don’t get better either. I know because I find myself driving behind them and beside them on the roads all the time!

If the saying, “practice makes perfect” doesn’t really work, my question is, “Should we keep doing things that we aren’t getting perfect at?”

Should I stop trying to play the guitar? … For sure some people should stop driving and leave that task to someone else! But there are some things that if we don’t become perfect at, well, it’s okay. We can get by; we don’t need to be perfect at them.

Writing for me is one of those things. When I see someone with neat handwriting I get a little jealous. But at the end of the day, I will live with the mess I create on my white board.

I will continue to decipher it when I review what I’ve written, and I will just be satisfied that I’m not perfect.

Here’s the thing: God isn’t waiting for us to be perfect; He takes us as we are and then He works on us. He doesn’t quit on us when we fail to make significant progress towards perfection, but He keeps encouraging us on, in spite of our imperfection and failed attempts. Your relationship with God is not one you should quit working on. Accept your deficiencies and keep working at them. One day in heaven you will be perfect.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What have you been working on that’s frustrating you? Leave your comments below.

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Perfect In The Moment

Have you ever been perfect? I don’t mean getting a perfect score on an exam – you just have to study hard to know the answers. I mean, have you ever done something perfectly?

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Maybe you assembled a BBQ and there were no extra parts left over. You marvelled over your feat … but that doesn’t really count if you had the instructions in front of you.

To be perfect in that, you would have to put the BBQ together with all the parts in the right place and nothing left over, WITHOUT using the instructions.

Now that would be perfect. It would also be impossible.

Being perfect is actually doing the impossible.  We are not perfect people; we all have some flaw … some more than others. But perfect we are not.

So when you find yourself being perfect, it does cause you to pause and cherish the moment, because it probably won’t ever happen again.

I’m telling you this because I was perfect a couple of weeks ago. It was just for a moment; it was over in a flash.

I didn’t even realize I was perfect until three days after my great accomplishment. In fact, I was already not perfect again by the time I found out I was perfect.

Have I got you hypnotized yet? Well let me tell you how it all happened.

I’m in a football pool. It’s not a high stakes, money laundering, loan sharking, football pool. It’s just for fun. No money at stake, the winner just gets the satisfaction of winning.

All we do is pick the winning teams from about 13 different football games each week. Oh ya, and they’re from three different leagues: US college games, NFL games and CFL games.

This pool has been going for the past nine years. And in the words of the league secretary, “… never before – not once – in our history has a franchise owner had a perfect weekend during the regular season. We’ve had 1 loss and plenty of 2 loss weekends, but NEVER HAS ANYONE HAD A PERFECT WEEKEND” (emphasis mine).

That’s right, I was perfect that weekend! I picked all the winners that week. And I did this with no manual, no insider information, not even a secret formula.

It was all pure luck – I mean, perfection.

I have to tell you, I felt pretty special for about 30 seconds after I read the announcement in my email. But I was alone at the time so I just got back to working on my sermon or something.

But as perfect as I was for that brief moment, my son was able to bring me down with a few words: “Dad you should have bought a sports lottery ticket. With those picks you would have won a lot of money.”

So what if I could have made millions, well, maybe thousands? What’s really important is I was perfect for that moment. No one can take it from me, and it probably won’t happen again.

Here’s the thing: Those times when you encounter God in a truly special way, in a way that only He can bring about, cherish those moments. Remember them. You’ll be able to find encouragement in them when you’ve lost your motivation. Those moments will give you strength to continue in times of difficulty. Supernatural times when God is so close and personal may not come every day, but they will always be crystal clear in your mind.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What encounter have you had with God that you will never forget? Leave your comment below.

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What You Need To Know About Perfect Timing

You know when you get that “WOW” moment, when something happens at the exact right time? It might be an important letter that comes just when you need it. Maybe you arrive on the scene at the exact time you’re needed most.

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Whatever it is, we call it “perfect timing”, and it amazes us every time it happens, doesn’t it?

This week we were stripping the paint off our cottage deck. Some was wearing off, some was blistering off … and I’m not sure what was going through the mind of the previous owner when he picked the colour to begin with!

The first day was a beautiful sunny, warm day and we got most of the paint off the deck itself. But we still had the railing posts and the steps to do.

The next day it started out raining. The sky was very dark and it looked like that was what it would be like the rest of the day. We had almost decided to pack up and go home when we got a little break in the rain.

So instead of leaving, we started in on it. We worked for most of the morning and then took a break for lunch. By mid afternoon we had used up all the goop we had bought to get the paint off.

We were pretty much done, so we started cleaning up and putting everything back in order. All the deck furniture, BBQ, etc. needed to be put back on the deck, not to mention the railing inserts that needed to be nailed back into place.

When everything was done, and the shed locked, we went into the cottage, and turned around to look at the work we had done. And WOW, the rain just started coming down like God had recanted on His promise to never send a flood again!

If we had have been out there ten seconds longer we would have been caught. It was quite a storm because twenty minutes away in Owen Sound a tornado touched down, and later that day there was another tornado in another part of the province.

But for us, it was perfect timing! … It reminds me of a time when my then 1 1/2 year old daughter was jumping on the same couch I was sitting on. I was talking to people across from me and out of the corner of my eye I noticed she jumped too high and went right over the armrest of the couch.

Without looking, I stuck my hand out and caught her by the ankle, with her head just inches from hitting the floor. It was a great catch – again perfect timing!

Perfect timing is awesome to experience. But you never know it’s going to happen until it does.

Here’s the thing: We can get really frustrated wanting something from God and then waiting seemingly forever for an answer. Whatever you do, don’t get in the way of what God is doing so that you miss His perfect timing. When God answers, it may surprise you, be different than you thought, or come at the eleventh hour. But one thing is for sure: it will be perfect timing. Then soak in the WOW.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: When have you experienced that perfect timing from God? I’d love to hear from you; you can leave your comment below.

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Customer Service . . . I’d Like Some!

Customer service is a very important part of a business or any organization. In these days with social media, customer service is even more important. If someone is treated poorly and has lots of followers on Twitter and Facebook, a bad review of your product or organization could go viral quickly.

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So you would think companies would be mindful of listening to their customers, trying to understand them, instead of frustrating them to the point of outrage.

I found out that all depends on who you are dealing with. If you are talking to a customer service rep, they are on your side, trying to make it easy for you to get the result you are looking for.

However, if you are dealing with someone in, let’s say, the accounting department, they are more likely concerned that numbers match up in their books. They don’t care about your experience or how you feel. They feel good when they experience a ledger that looks neat and all balanced-like.

You might be able to see where this is going. That’s right, I had a customer service issue with our photocopier company at work and I was dealing with someone who really only cared about applying a credit to our account … a credit they should have sent to our old photocopier company to buy it out! I just finished writing a long letter to the company – maybe that should have been my blog today!

So, as I take an extra beta blocker this morning (just kidding) to keep my blood pressure in the earth’s atmosphere, I need to get a few things off my chest.

When dealing with a customer, listen to them. Hear not only their words but the emotion that’s behind the words. If you sense there is a frustration, don’t repeat what you have already done (and which failed) over and over again. It does NOT calm someone down!

When you have promised to take care of something for the customer and have not done so, don’t ask the customer to research and come up with a solution. Find a solution for them.

When a customer comes back to you with a solution, don’t tell the customer again what you have already done (and which failed). It doesn’t give the customer the sense that you are listening to them.

When you realize that the issue is something beyond you, don’t make the customer craft a letter to present their case to the people above your pay grade. YOU go to bat for them.

Finally when you realize that maybe, just maybe, your company dropped the ball (even a tiny bit), acknowledge it and tell the customer you are sorry, or they will feel you don’t care about your customers, and that might start something on Twitter or Facebook.

Here’s the thing: We often get upset with God’s customer service when He doesn’t answer us, or provide what we are looking for from Him, or even when we think “how could God let that happen”. But consider this … He is perfect and we aren’t. We’re the ones who have messed up and are in the wrong, yet He is still gracious, and patient and loving to us. Wow! That is great customer service.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What is your most frustrating customer service story? Leave your comment below.