Ponderings on blessings and sufferings

This morning I was up pretty early and got an hour or two of patent application work done. Then it was time to fill some book orders. One was just picking the books and packing them. Another we had to print some of the books. You know we print, stitch (staple), fold and trim some of the small booklets we sell. If a booklet really starts to make a hit, we will then go get it printed. We're pretty conservative in our projections. I must have personally printed, stapled, and trimmed almost 2000 copies of The Chapel Veil before I was convinced we'd be able to sell a bunch more and got it professionally printed.

In those early days my printer didn't do double-sided copies, so I would print 50-100 copies of page 1 and then re-load it in the printer for page 2, etc. Now I have a great workhorse which does double-sided automatically (Brother HL5250DN). We loved getting those orders for 50-100 copies or more, cause it meant we could eat. But boy I dreaded those same big orders; by the end of stapling 200 copies, my back would be killing me.

We had another booklet which I almost sent out for printing after I had done about 1200 copies. Fortunately I didn't, because in the next year, we didn't sell more than about 25 or so after the first 1200.

Today I was filling an order for 25 booklets we print ourselves, not too bad. But I was printing an order of 200 of another booklet. We had a quality problem due to a defect in the drum. Fortunately I caught it before too many booklets were printed.

At this point, I've just returned from the post office, shipping out a couple orders. I have to change the toner in the printer before finishing the printing job on that 200. But I am sipping a beer, so I'll finish it up tomorrow.

I was reminded (in an opposite sort of way) of the joy and relief (and thanks to God) we used to experience in the past (and even today at times) when those big booklet orders would come in when this morning I read of the despair which accompanied the potato famine in Ireland. I am still reading The Silent People (see post somewhere below) by Walter Macken. The Irish (most of whom didn't own their land and if they didn'tt have a crop they would not make rent and would be evicted-no mercy here) have just gone through the first winter after the first year of blight. It is July and everything is looking good. Then one morning:

And so he was crying, 'They are gone! They are gone!'. the replies to him were like an echo in the valley. They saw other men in the fields. It was five o'clock in the morning. and they paused and heard and ran to their own fields behind the house, and could not believe their eyes. For the green fields were blasted to death. The strong stalks and the broad leaves were lying like brown muck on the ground, and the same smell was with them that had been there last year. They were blighted to death. Every single stalk. It was no use going digging with your fingers. You didn't have to look under the stalkes to know. You knew what wasn't there. It couldn't be true. Not now! After all the sacrifice! After all the pain! After all the beggary! No again!

There was a silent wail went up from the valley that would have drowned the highest wind, if men had the strength to shout it.

.....It cannot be so. Where was God, they asked? What is He doing to us? What have we done to deserve this? Wasn't one year enough? Were there not enough of us eliminated from the face of the earth like much scraped off with a shovel? They would not forget this day.

After reading this, our petty struggles a couple years ago and last year seem trivial. God is good. God is with us even if we don't understand His plan. This is a hard lesson to learn-that you must conform yourself to God's will not the other way around.

Oremus pro invicem!