When I called one of the church ladies to ask her to remind her husband of our upcoming men’s supper, she sounded a bit puzzled when I told her it would be on the Friday evening before Father’s Day.  She had been in conversation with someone else from the church and had understood that the meal would be at noon on Sunday.

I assured her that it was on Friday and not Sunday, and she stated that she thought Sunday lunch would be a rather odd time to have a meal for men only anyway.

Her confusion about when the men were supposed to meet sounded a little odd to me and I started to second guess what I had put in the bulletin the previous Sunday.

But it was no big deal and we had gotten it all straightened out.  At least I thought we did!

On Saturday evening as I discussed with Gale how I wanted to spend Father’s Day afternoon, she was forced to tell me that the ladies would be serving a surprise meal after church for all the fathers.

That made my telephone conversation make more sense; I figured that Connie had almost accidentally let it slip out to me about Sunday’s plans so she had pretended to think that the meal for the men only was on Sunday to cover up what she had said.  So now I had it all figured out—or so I thought!

Father’s Day got off to a good start.

The ladies brought in all kinds of good food as they always do when we have a church meal.  When Connie walked in empty handed, though, the look on her face was priceless when she spotted all those freshly prepared dishes!  She is an excellent cook and always brings delicious food, but somehow the message got confused and we missed out on her good cooking that time.

Being the good sport that she is, she laughed it off with the rest of us.

And as it turned out, there was plenty to eat and we all had a great time as we enjoyed a wonderful Father’s Day meal together.

Even what may seem to be small details can make a big difference in the outcome that we hope to achieve.

Missing, inaccurate or confused details can cause a lot of difficulty, and our best efforts to convey information accurately can, and often do, come up short.  As humans, we are imperfect and thus prone to shortcomings and failures; quite often we do not get all the details of life right.

Thankfully, we can rest assured that God is perfect and He always gets every detail right.  Because of His perfection we can trust Him completely–even in those circumstances when things do not make sense to us.

We do not have to understand all about what God chooses to do, and we do not even have to like every detail of what He does, but we can confidently take Him at His word as we submit to His plan for our lives.  The words of Psalm 18:30 are well worth remembering:  “As for God, His way is perfect; the Word of the Lord is flawless.  He is a shield for all who take refuge in Him”  (New International Version).