“God works in strange and mysterious ways God’s wonders to perform.”
Bubba read what he calls the “Bubba Version” of his favorite Psalm to his Sunday school class: “God works in strange and MISCHIEVIOUS ways MY BLUNDERS TO REFORM.” Of course, everyone noticed his changes in the wording and they laughed. He enjoys a good blunder now and then and they are often pre-thought—but sometimes they are spontaneous. Whichever, Bubba is seldom caught off guard and he enjoys his own “buffoonery,” as he calls it. (Bubba says that buffoonery is a strange sounding word, and it has a strange meaning.”)
He also makes unintentional blunders. They are the ones he is most concerned about. When he can, he will laugh, but sometimes his slip-ups are totally un-funny—and even Bubba is left without a cheerful response. But not this time. He was intentional when he read these words to the Class.
The word, WONDERS is a good word, although not usually in Bubba’s vocabulary. But he is right at home with BLUNDERS.
He also changed the word, MYSTERIOUS, to MISCHIEVOUS. “Mischievous” is a synonym for the real Bubba! He is unpredictable, colorful, and fun-loving. If given the choice of being “naughty or nice” guess which one Bubba would choose. I don’t mean
“naughty-naughty” or nasty. I mean that he stays right near the borderline, skating on the edge, for sheer excitement.
When he thinks of God working in “mischievous” ways, he feels he is actually claiming spiritual kinship with the Divine. It’s his way of acknowledging that he and God are alike in some way—that he and God have “something” between them that is so special, and so much a part of him, he is eager to claim it.
He also changed “perform” in the verse to “reform” and he changed “our” to “my.” So when Bubba laughs and reads this verse as “God works in strange and mischievous ways my blunders to reform,” the verse is very personal. To Bubba, his translation is no laughing matter!
Do you think I should tell Bubba that the quote he began with is not from Psalms, but from Shakespeare? He would laugh and say, “Just another Bubba blunder!”
