Praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! Psalm 146:1

Our office was closed for four days over the Easter weekend. It seemed that Monday would be a good day to come in and catch up on work while things were quiet.I’m not sure what it says about our staff, our work load, or our sanity that virtually every other staff member in our office thought exactly the same thing and we had a full house for a while.

Looking at the schedule for the coming week, I almost broke out in hives over the 202 bills that will be heard on the House floor today. With bad bills flying through with little or no debate, this 101 Republican majority is beginning to scare me a bit. There are so many bills that purport to do one thing while in reality they do the exact opposite. We have immigration bills that look good and do nothing. We have education bills to cut local mandates that only serve to cut teacher pay and increase teacher workloads, while leaving multitudes of unnecessary mandates in place. We have an appropriations bill for a two year biennium that only fund about 18 months of the period. And we have legislators who are like little boys whistling in the dark as they run past the woods, pretending they are not afraid and hoping the boogie man won’t jump out and get them.

My job is to read the bills, analyze them and make recommendations about the content of the bill. I used to think my job was to stop the bad stuff and get the good stuff passed. That understanding of my job description left me a total failure and utterly frustrated. It is much easier to fulfill my duty to read, analyze recommend and then tell God on ‘em when they do the wrong thing.

John Quincey Adam’s nailed it when he said, “Duty is our’s results are God’s.”

And, I praise the Lord that the results are in His hands.

Lord, Do you see what is going on around here? Just checking. Thank you that nothing is happening around here today that is going to take you by surprise. Amen.