Surrendering Your Life to God’s Control

Don't ever doubt or pout when things just don't work out.
Smile, for you're part of God's inside clan,
And your problem is part of His divine plan.
Doesn't that thought make you feel grand?
~Marcus Z. Hurst

I wrote the above verse due to the results of a very trying week of mine; which was just this past week, in February 2022. Let me tell you the story:

At Windmill Workshop, which I administrate, we got the job of printing, stuffing, and mailing 2,300 seed fliers for a local business. This project was already running a few weeks late, so we needed to get it done as soon as possible.

On Fri. Jan. 29th we got a start on the project and ran the printer as much as we could. That evening I went back to the workshop to keep running the printer and check the toner levels; for I knew the printing was going to be the slowest part of our system. And that is when the blue toner got all. Oh, for some reason I never thought of making sure we have plenty of toners.

I went home and ordered toners online that night yet. Now when it came to finding toner, there was toner for $150 that has the chance of perhaps not working as well, and there is the OEM (name brand) toner, for $350 that really should work very well. As I looked across my toner options, I found some after-market toner that was 100% guaranteed; and supposedly it went through the same vigorous test that the OEM toner went through; and this was for $146. I decided to take the chance and bought it, with 2-day shipping.

The toner arrived around 10:00 Tuesday morning. We right away stuck the blue toner in the printer and were soon back in business.

But after 60 pages the flier started looking horrible. I went all over the printer trying to figure out what was going on. All the time my mind was thinking, “It is probably the cheap toner.”

We had Workshop newsletters to print so I tried to print those, and they printed quite well. But when we went back to the fliers again, we had the same problem.

Now we had printed the fliers from a different tray, in which letter-size paper came out sideways. I thought maybe if we used the big tray and get the paper coming out the long way, like the newsletter did that printed well, we might be fine. But when we tried to do that, the paper would jam every time.

When the boys and other staff caught up with the printer on the seed flier project, they worked on folding and stuffing workshop newsletters.

When I got home that afternoon I ordered OEM toner with 2-day shipping. Later in the evening, I went back to the workshop to scratch my head about it some more.

Now I felt I had not sufficiently consulted God about the problem yet. So before I tackled the issue, I prayed about the situation, and a solution for it, till I felt at peace and assured that God’s will would be done.

When I got back to the printer to do further diagnostic work I soon found out why the paper from Tray 2 had jammed every time. It turned out I had the paper turned the wrong way in the tray. I turned it the right way and it printed like all good printers do when everything is correct. And I must add, the quality was much better. Although there were a few spots, we decided it was good enough; so we got back to keeping the printer going as much as we could.

On Wednesday I received a request to do still another printing project. I talked it over with the workshop board and we agreed we did not want to turn down work. We decided to work Thursdays, which is typically my day off, so we can knock out a bunch of work and not have to turn down the third printing job.

So we got together Thursday, and we indeed got a lot of work done… Till we run out of blue toner, around 1:00 in the afternoon.

Well, I was very glad I had toner ordered that was supposed to be in on Friday. To think that I would not have ordered it if we had not run into problems with the print quality and blamed it on the cheap toner.

At the end of the day Thursday, will ran out of inside envelopes for the newsletter project we were doing; so I went and bought more envelopes first thing Friday morning. But when I tried to print the return address on the envelopes would jam, every time. (Yes, and this time I made sure it was not jamming for the reason it jammed the other time.)

So, we drove over to my place to print envelopes and pick up the toner when it arrived. We had not been there long at all till UPS dropped off a package. It happened to be very icy that morning, and the UPS driver wondered if he could drop off a package for the farm in the lane so he did not have to drive in there. We said that would be fine, which made his day. So, while the printer was printing envelopes, we walked the other package into the farm. (Notice the timing, how UPS arrived soon after we did, and we made his day by accepting the package that belonged in the lane.)

We opened the package that UPS dropped off, but it was not the toner I had expected it was. It was the waste toner tray that I had ordered at the same time. Shortly after that, I got an email stating this waste toner had shipped and would be arriving Monday through Wednesday of next week???

The toners we were expecting did arrive a few hours later. We stuck them in the printer and continued the job.  

Conclusion…

Thinking over these events, I realize we were using toners much faster than I thought we ever would. If I would have ordered OEM toners the first time, I would not have ordered more toner till after we ran out of blue toner on Thursday. This would have pushed the project back; and instead of getting it in the mail on Wednesday, the 9th, it would have gone till Friday. Unless we took another one of my off days to work on the project. Also, we would not have gotten the workshop newsletters printed, which would have pushed that project back as well.

God knows what He is doing in our life. In this case, He cared for me and my work to the degree of being willing to make me frustrated for the sake of a better end.

Yes, we could question why He didn’t just make me realize our need for toner in plenty of time. If I would have prayed about the situation sooner I likely would have thought of it; but sometimes God needs to shake our world, so to speak, so He can get our attention to tell us such details.

This was obviously the way God saw best to work through this situation, and who are we to argue with His all-wise plan?

If we doubt God less, and trust Him more, I am certain we would live a happier, more carefree life. Though it looks scary from the outside, one will never regret surrendering their life to God’s control.

Here are more stories of God’s hand in my life: