Skip to main content

Help!

                 Surely God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me. (Psalm 54:4)

 

It happened again yesterday. It happens almost every day. Someone comes to the checkout counter with a cart cluttered with items. It usually happens in one of two ways. One is that the customer will start telling me how many of each specific type of plant they have. The garden center where I work charges by the container type, so their “two of this, and five of that” is really “seven three-packs.”

The other way it happens is that even after I’ve said, “Leave everything there,” they have to pull everything off the cart and put it on the counter. I then have to pick everything up that they’ve already picked up and reorganize and pack it. A third way just came to mind. I clear a section of the cart so I can put a box in the clear spot, and the customer just has to spread things out and reorganize things into the spot I’ve just cleared. And today, someone started taking things from the box of counted items and putting them up for me to count! That would have been a bad scene if I hadn’t caught her.

Yep, they’re trying to help. I understand that. Today, I had to check a wave of irritation. I wanted to say, “Get your hands off the merchandise and let me do my job!” I didn’t, but I wanted to. Instead, I thought of the times that I’ve tried to help various people who have come to do something for me, or the times that I’ve felt that I absolutely had to help God somehow.

The other thing that came to mind was the book I’m reading with my Sunday School class. Professor Willard writes that we should envision ourselves as living the way Jesus would live if He were in our shoes. Once we have the vision, we should intentionally take steps toward becoming that person according to the method or means we’ve chosen.

On the one hand, we’re told we should study to show ourselves approved, that we’re to die to ourselves, offer ourselves up as sacrifices, put on Christ, etc. Clearly, we’re to be involved. We’re not to be passive. But on the other hand, we aren’t to take God’s place in our lives. I can’t help but imagine God taking a step back, folding His arms and waiting until I stop getting in the way. In fact, there are times that I think He gives me something to pay attention to that really doesn’t matter so that I’m too busy with it to notice what He’s working on.

That all leads me back to the vision I set earlier in the spring of learning to dance with God. The point, at least at the moment, doesn’t seem to be on my taking on some big project in which I practice traditional spiritual disciplines like Bible study or fasting – though they could do me good. Rather, the point seems to be to do as I envisioned earlier this spring: to learn to dance with God. That may mean that for the next thirty seconds, I should be doing one thing, and in the two hours after that, I should be doing another. That way, I will learn to get out of His way when He's helping me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

Listen To Him

              The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him . (Deuteronomy 18:15)           Today, we switch from Jesus’ claims of “I am” to prophecies made about Him. My Bible platform is starting in Deuteronomy. I’d start in Genesis, where we would learn that the one who would save us would be a descendant of Eve (Genesis 3:15), of Noah (by default), Abram and Sara(Genesis 12:1-3). Isaac (Genesis 17:19), Jacob (Genesis 25:23), Judah (Genesis 29:8), and David (II Samuel 7:12-16). There were also references to a new covenant (Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:22-32). In addition, there were prophecies about when and where the prophet/Messiah would be born and what would happen to him.           Of course, naysayers will claim that Jesus’ life was retrofitted or reverse enginee...
Post a Comment
Read more