Last Monday ended on kind of a weird note. For the most part, it was a good day for me. I put in for that day off so my birthday weekend would be an extended one. I reacquainted myself with an old business contact to try to get some things moving in a different direction in terms of my job situation. The meeting went well. After that, I felt like swinging by my old job and I?m glad I did. Saw some people that I hadn?t seen in quite some time, all of whom were happy to see me. So I was kinda flying high for a while. Then the evening came?

Beth called me sometime after 10 p.m. really upset. She told me that the passenger side window of her car had been smahed. There was glass all over the front seat ? it had been completely shattered. She was able to get most of it out and had placed tarps on the driver?s seat as in the windowless door. Thankfully, our auto insurance covered it and we wouldn?t have to pay a dime to get it replaced. She drove home and was able to get it fixed the next day.

Under the circumstances, both of us seemed to take the whole thing in stride. Perhaps we knew that the situation could?ve been a lot worse. Beth could?ve been in the car when the incident took place. She could?ve been seriously hurt?maybe even fatally hurt. Unfortunately, these things happen more often than they should. Parking in a fairly safe neighborhood doesn?t change the fact that crime travels. Material things aren?t worth freaking out over, especially when they?re far less valuable than human lives.

I had been reading the Book of Job from the Old Testament of the Bible, so I was kind of ready for bad news to come. And of course, that news paled in comparison to what Job had to go through. He lost his family, his home, his help staff, his possessions, and broke out in sores all over his body that oozed pus. The only people he had to talk to were his so-called ?friends? that kept trying to figure out what he had done to deserve all of this. And for over two-thirds of the book?s chapters, God didn?t say a word. And when He finally did speak, it wasn?t the answer that Job was expecting. Considering what he had to go through, I wasn?t about to go ape over a broken car window. If anything, I?m thankful that nothing else was broken, nothing was stolen, and that my wife was nowhere near the car when it happened.

Beth kept a souvenir from that night: the rock she found in the car afterwards. She figured somebody hit the window with a crowbar or something. She described the rock?s size as ?no bigger than an apricot.? I?ve seen it and it looks smaller than that. We?ve been trying to figure out how this small rock caused so much damage. Just exactly how fast was that thing traveling, and from where? We?ll probably never know, but we do know this:

Job had it worse. FAR worse.