Russellings of the Spirit

Every time I hear multi-mega millionaire Mick Jagger sing the words, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you need” I ask this question. But I am sure that there were times in his life that he was not able to satisfy any urge or whim at the drop of a hat. He must have even experienced hunger, in a long ago and far away time.

Source notwithstanding, I still think this is a brilliant insight on life. It even begins to border on the spiritual when you stop to raise the question of how “what you need” gets defined for any of us. If you squinted really hard you can begin to see how this tuneful rock anthem can be heard calling us to a stance of fundamental gratitude for the provisions of life we find on our hands… regardless of how well they match up with the hopes and dreams we might have entertained.

Take my situation right now as I sit here writing this entry. Joan and I made arrangements months ago (Truth watch: OK, Joan made the arrangements. But when the time came to endorse them, I gave them a very enthusiastic thumbs up!) to take a few days off in mid-February and get away for a mini-vacation. We wanted to pick some place warm so that we could escape the freezing Kansas City winter and have a nice little break. Celebrate Recovery was launching at the end of January, so it seemed like a good time to break away. 

Great idea, eh?

Great idea until little things like the jet stream and temperature inversions and barometric pressures start cavorting around crazily, doing strange and unusual things, the net result of which was that we left a sunny, 70 degree day in Kansas City and landed in a drizzly 55 degree Phoenix. Then after spending a couple of days in “The Valley of the Sun,” with Joan’s sister, we drove off to our little mountaintop hideaway in Sedona. Of course, as we drove north up Highway 17 the rain became chunky. By the time we were settled in and ready to head off to the local grocery store to buy our supplies, a full-blown snowstorm was upon us.  We awoke on Tuesday morning to see six inches of new snow on the ground, by one local’s account, the most they have seen here in “quite a long time.” And then pulling up the Kansas City Star on-line I found that sunny and 59 degrees was the order of the day in K.C.

(However the shock of the weather disparity was mitigated somewhat by my joy at seeing that Missouri had beaten KU in basketball the night before).

We certainly did not get what we wanted. But as it turned out, we did get a whole lot of exactly what we needed on this trip. We did not get warm sunshine. We did not get to take two or three spectacular hikes in the red rock region of Sedona (although we did take a really nice hike in the Superstition Mountains before leaving Phoenix). But we did get a great time away… lots of time spent in relaxation and conversation and reading… we got breathtaking views of the red rocks covered with white snow against a brilliant blue sky and time to pick up the blogging practice again. And we got “times of refreshment” as Paul calls them.

Mick says, “You can’t always get what you want.” The Psalmist says, “THIS” – not some other, not one that you hoped for or dreamed of, not one that you read about in a magazine article or saw a picture of somewhere, not one that your best friend told you about and said you really ought to try, but THIS very exact one, “… is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:24).

I say “AMEN.”