Simple solutions, extraordinary results

 

One of the biggest complaints we had in my 25 years with U-Haul was the long wait times to be served.  The “higher ups” would try to solve the problem with what they called “labor-saving” devices—like electronic hand-held devices, or programs that involved a lot of training—yet the complaints still kept coming.  The managers who had to take most of the “heat” from the customers grew weary and disillusioned.  I was one of those.  One day, my boss came up with what I thought was the dumbest idea I have ever heard.  “Why don’t you just lift your head from the computer screens once in a while, make eye contact, and acknowledge the customers in line with a smile or a “Be with you as soon as I can!”?  He said what bothered customers the most while waiting to be served was the uncertainty that they had even been seen.  I, and a lot of my peers thought “What does he know?  He doesn’t have to deal with these people!”  "It can't be that simple!"  Because my opinion is that I should follow the direction of a superior who signs my paycheck, I taught my team to do as he suggested, anyway.  We cut our “long wait” complaints 90% in 2 weeks’ time!  All those years, and a simple answer was the most effective.

Sometimes we make our lives and our relationship with God more difficult than it has to be.  This idea is illustrated perfectly in Jesus’ words in the Gospel, “No prophet is accepted in his own native place [Luke 4:24-30].”  Sometimes we only hear what we want to hear, or we think what we need to do must be more complicated.  Naaman, in a passage from 2 Kings, went to the prophet Elisha, looking for a cure for leprosy [2 Kings 5:1-15].  Elisha gave him a simple answer: “Go and wash seven times in the River Jordan”.  But Naaman didn’t buy it.  In fact, he got angry.  He was certain the answer had to be more complicated.  It was his servants who had the answer to his skepticism: “My father,” they said, “if the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary, would you not have done it?  All the more now, since he said to you, ‘Wash and be clean,’ should you do as he said.”

Sometimes we seek a complicated solution, a bargain with God that will let us do what we want to do.  What we have to realize is that what God wants from us is extraordinary and simple.  We have to learn to be quiet so we can really hear our own heart.  I pray that I can open my heart and listen, even if the answer seems simple.  Let me see what is extraordinary in the everyday, in the people around me.