not over til it's over

Yep. The whole day pretty much followed along the lines it had begun with. Right down to the baggage claim part, when I remained like an orphan at the belt while all my fellow travelers had happily gone off with their many bags. Abandoned, I looked for some help, and saw an airport person unloading boxes from the conveyor. As I went toward him, lo and behold: my little suitcase and my box of books had been there all along--having arrived on an earlier flight. Sounds good, right? But my box of books had split open somewhere along the way. Thanks be to God, all the contents seem to have been preserved, including the donated box of Tootsie Rolls which I was bringing for Sr. Mary Caroline, to help speed her recovery from cancer surgery.
I kept trying to pray through all these mishaps, wondering how to redeem the day. But there was one aspect that I would have missed on the early bird flight: I would not have seen all the families, and all the tiny babies and toddlers on the later flights. It was a lesson for me: God is all about love and about the joy of loving. He doesn't even care about the $400 I may not succeed in getting back for my congregation. Because even the money, while necessary to our work, is intended for spreading the love of God. And if I can be more inspired by love after seeing those precious kids and the joy their parents had in them, God may think it was an investment well made.