Life is a picnic

Have you ever heard someone say "It's no picnic? It means that something is not particularly easy or pleasant. There may be a lot of things we can say that about, but if we try, we just might be able to make picnics everyday. Seriously.

Over the weekend, I was in the park with friends and neighbors doing all of the traditional things - listening to music, chatting with each other, playing games, and of course eating delicious burgers, hot dogs, salads, and cookies. It was a picnic indeed!

"When things are a bit tense, when life is not going at its best, when the potential for disaster is just around the corner, when your enemies are all around you - and even staring you down! - that's when God lays out the red-checkered picnic cloth and says, "Oooo, this is a nice place. Let's hang out here together for a while. . .just you and me." That's what David Brazzeal says in Pray Like a Gourmet: Creative Ways to Feed Your Soul (a very good read, by the way). Brazzeal is giving us his idea of what Psalm 23 is all about. Yes, God spreads a picnic for us - if we let him.

Not a lot of money in your pocket? Health not what you would like it to be? You don't know a lot of people? So many excuses we allow to turn us in the negative direction, and it is certainly true that every day is not as pleasant as the next, but why give up? When I look back at yesterday, I realize how simple it was. We didn't eat fancy food. We didn't have live entertainment. We didn't spend a lot of money on sports equipment. We could probably have scaled back and had an even more simple get-together, and still have had a lot of fun. Life is a picnic, if we allow it to be.