Why thank you, bep.
Yes, actually as Willow says it, a li'l of both. Or a lot of both. Our cup runneth over, and we are fools for Christ's sake.
I like to think of myself as "winning". I suppose we all do. But I've begun to see that as a choice, mentally, or spiritually, or emotionally. I've begun noticing all the "winning" combinations in my life lately--usually not very big things, just little things--that are probably no different than in the past, except that I just looked at them differently, their "losing" aspects, or was so busy thinking about what they were "not", instead of what they "were"--or "are".
Like the ram that is there over in that thicket, just when Abraham needs it, in place of offering Isaac instead.
Apparently that ram was right there all the time. But it had to be "noticed".
And when we are "losing", I've begun to notice that every loss possibly has an "uptick" to it--you just don't know when that uptick is coming. And it doesn't always show itself when you think that it aught or should. And you don't have any control over that "uptick", although you can prevent it, or mess it up, on the theory that it is possible for human beings to always be thwarting or messing up the Spirit's larger fulfillments(even though still larger, "everything does work together for good for them that love the Lord"(
). Sort of like a bumbling INspector Clouseau, or the Three Stooges, or Mr. McGoo(the thing I like about those, or least McGoo is, as bumbling and as blind as he is, his bumbling and crooked, convoluted path and detour he's always taking always ends up apprehending the evil going on about him, and through no help from him.
McGoo, perhaps without intending it, seems a very spiritual metaphor, about the working of God's spirit(the one I'm thinking of is the children's movie of several years ago, with Leslie Nielson)).
