Opus 2025-471: The Cog of Destiny

How many cogs does it take to make a gear effective?  I’m going to suggest all or most of them.  I only am willing to say “most” because it’s possible something depending on a cog wheel might be able to function if one were broken off.  I don’t know.

My reflection is based on an awareness of how little influence I will ever have on the world.  Bear with me on the assumption that I might actually have something to offer.  I know that is an assumption, but consider it just a bit of my ego as I was wondering what difference it made if I lived the good life, seeking to be upright, following the rule of law, keeping the golden rule, in general being what used to be considered you’re basic American citizen.

What difference does it make?

And I got to thinking about how one drop does not create a flash flood, but if enough drops of water were redirected, instead of a flash flood you would have a life giving rain.  You never know if you’re going to be the straw that breaks the camels back.  I’m not sure how you turn that positive but try to take it that way.

My recent experience brought this home.  I may have written about it before in the sense of talking about my riding mower.  My wife finally manipulated things so that I ended up with a used riding mower.  It did the job OK until one day it didn’t.  It started getting hard to steer and I had to play around with it to make it go left.  Then came the day when it refused to go left.  The reason?  It was missing a couple of cogs.  Part of the steering mechanism is a rod with teeth on it that meshed with the column coming from the steering wheel.  If you looked at it from one angle, you couldn’t see any problem.  If you held it up and sighted down the row, you could clearly see how there was a dip in the smooth line somewhere in the middle.  There was a cog that just would not bite.

It only took one cog to make the tractor worthless.

Are you that cog?  Am I that cog?  The point is we will never know until it’s too late.  That is why it is so important for each of us to fulfill our small role in making our world worth living in.  That of course is easier if you believe in God’s Providence and that He knows what He’s doing, which I do.  I will admit I tend to forget it sometimes in my frustration, but the belief is still there.  So I will continue with my little drops of wisdom.  Nothing I write will change the world, but combined with what you do and what God has others doing it could just happen.

Destiny is often fulfilled in small packages.

homo unius libri