Well, DUH!

Years ago, this poster hung in the dining room of my friends Phil & Amy’s house. I found it hilarious then and I still do today, because I think we have all had those moments where we feel exactly like this poster looks — goofy smile, eyes all googy, pointing to your tilted head while saying…well, DUH! after you just said or did something without thinking. I love it. It’s one of those iconic things that we can all identify with. Tonight at Starbucks, I pulled a misuse of the phrase “you too.” (Comedian Brian Regan highlights this in his material.) The lady made me my amazing hot chocolate and she handed it to me with a cheerful, “Enjoy your drink!” To which I immediately and automatically said, “You too!” as I was expecting more of a “Thanks and have a good evening.” I then had to stop and correct myself to her, saying, “I mean, I will enjoy my drink, thank you, and you enjoy the rest of your night is what I meant to say.” She just laughed. “Well, Duh!” I said to myself. “Listen to what people say before you open your mouth and respond with what you expect them to say. Goodness, Joshua.”

That’s not really a capital “Well Duh!” moment, like the time I looked high and low for my car keys, becoming more and more frustrated by the ten minutes it was taking me to find them, only to reach into the front pocket of my hoodie and find them safely there. Gosh.

These moments happen all the time though. It’s like we suddenly realize something so completely obvious for the first time that we can not fathom how we missed it before. I actually love these moments. It’s like the first time someone told you about the arrow in the FedEx logo, and once you have seen it, you can’t not see it any more. Well Duh! There it is, wow. I think our lives are like that spiritually as well. We suddenly grasp a concept in the Bible or see a truth for the first time and we think, well, Duh! How did I not see this for all this time? How did I not get this concept? It’s awesome, though, because it is the process of illumination.

When I was in school at Bob Jones University, one of my favorite things to do was to visit the BJU Art Gallery on Sunday afternoons. It was so quiet and restful, with the strains of a Vivaldi or a Mozart piece quietly in the background, your feet sinking into the deep carpeting in the quiet galleries. My friend Paul used to like to come with me, and one day we happened upon a gallery with a painting by Edward Matthew Ward entitled, Martin Luther Discovering Justification By Faith. Paul and I looked at it and he just started laughing (and he had the loudest cackling laugh ever) because of the look of Luther’s face in the painting. He was just standing there, over the Bible with a “Well, Duh!” expression. I think it would have been awesome if he would have been slapping his forehead in the painting. “How on earth did I miss this?!” Needless to say, we got a huge kick out of it and we had to leave the gallery immediately because we were both laughing so hard.

Anyway… Illumination and “Well, DUH!” moments. Fun parts of life.