Day 22: The gift in a catalyst

I'm not really sure how many people reading this are chemistry buffs, OR even how many people can recall their (perhaps limited) exposure to Chemistry in high school. But if you stretch your mind back to it all, a catalyst is a substance that triggers or increases the rate of a chemical reaction, without actually undergoing change itself (and there was my inner nerd showing it's face once again :P). In titling this post "the gift in a catalyst" I was not actually referring to chemical substances which increase the rate of reactions, but I was thinking of objects, actions, events and persons which precipitate other reactions and events. They are a blessing.

On a (very) small scale, I was catalysed into cleaning my room last Friday night. My sister had vacummed  both my room and the study area we share and my slightly disorganised and messy floordrobe had been moved from the floor to my bed. That was the catalyst for me to clean my room. I could have taken everything from my bed and put it all back on the floor, where it was originally. That would have been much quicker and I could have gone to bed earlier. Instead, I put everything in it's original place (which actually isn't on the floor). Now my room is clean. The floor being vacuumed was a catalyst for me to clean my bedroom.

Now that was really a minor example. There are other catalysts in our lives too. Things happen to us so that we do things which we may not have done otherwise. They are blessings. They help us to achieve things which otherwise may not happen. A catalyst may be an inspiring sermon which makes us go home and do something that we had been putting off for a long time. It may be a memory or a photograph which makes you contact an old friend and speak to them again. It may be a deadline for a certain project which gets you into action so that once that project is done you are much more productive than before. Whatever your catalyst may be, be thankful for it, it certainly is a gift.