Perceptions: The juggler

One of my useless talents is the ability to juggle. I picked this up in high school, trying to impress a girl. (It's the sort of thing you do if you're no good at sports.)

Learning to juggle is a multistep process. For starters, you must be able to throw a single ball in the air and catch it. Next, you work with two balls and one hand. Then you try three balls with two hands. If you are really good (I'm not) you add a fourth ball. In the process, you drop a lot of balls.

I think most of us feel like we are juggling one ball too many, but maybe this is not all bad. How dull it would be to sit in a chair and throw and catch the same ball over and over. Maybe dropping a few balls now and then is a sign that we are growing.

Have you ever considered how many balls God can juggle? Think of the billions upon billions of stars and planets. Think of the myriads of subatomic particles orbiting around each other. Now that's a juggling routine.

The skeptic in me protests that there is nothing amazing about this. Planets and atoms just follow the laws of gravity. Come to think of it, though, so do my juggled balls. When people tell me I am a good juggler, I am happy to receive the compliment. I do not tell them it is only gravity. It is inconsistent to accept the compliment for myself and deny it to God.

I often feel like my juggling routine is about to fall apart. When this happens, I take courage in the fact that I am not just juggling, I am being juggled. The one who set the stars and atoms in motion set me in motion as well. Though I often question my place in the grand design, from the look of things I am in expert hands.

Maury Robertson is a writer who lives in Yuba City. Contact him at josephmrobertson@hotmail.com.