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Monsters

             And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:17) 

             Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (II Corinthians 12:8-10)

 

            I sometimes feel crazy busy. I sometimes feel crazy. I sometimes feel busy. Sometimes, I multitask and feel any combination of the three. More than one person has said that I’m probably ADHD, but there are times when I think it’s a kind of Obsessive Compulsive thing. From what I’ve heard, people with OCD have to repeat their action because they believe something bad will happen if they don’t. That might not be the only sort of OCD there is, but I can relate to it. If I do not keep busy thinking or doing something, it’s sort of like my mind has an autoimmune disease. My mind turns its attention to me and starts chewing.

            Now, it’s likely that someone who actually knows about these things would tell me that I must be crazy to think I’m crazy. They might be right. I might just be looking for a way to justify my rebellious refusal to rest. Feel free to pray that God would heal, fix, correct, or otherwise change me. Or, you may think I’m exaggerating, too. That’s OK.

            But I’m blathering away about all this for a reason. Often, when we think about our “whatever we do in word or deed” being done to God's glory, everything we do should somehow be a masterpiece. If it isn’t a DaVinci, Van Gogh, Paluh, or Kincaid, well, it will not glorify God. Maybe I’m the only one who thinks that way. If I’m not Einstein, Jefferson, Da Vinci, and either C.S. Lewis or Dallas Willard all rolled into one – or if I’m none of them, then it’s not good enough…

            But even if we bring it down to what one might call a normal life – we have this notion that anything below “this point” is failure. We’re not really talking about sin, just failure. You think you should be able to jump across a 2 foot stream and end up to your ankles in water. One of my characters in Word Fire welcomes another into the Community of the Incompetents. We try, but we sing that note just a little flat, or drive a half a mile per hour faster than the speed limit, or add a list of ten numbers and get an answer that is off by one…  you know, the things that somehow can’t be to the glory of God. I mean, can they? And if they can, then how?

            How can my bouncing around among as many as six different projects, or spilling coffee (I swear it’s my favorite perfume!) or having to rip out a hundred ten rows of crochet or plastic canvas stitches because I just notice I screwed up way back there, or any of the other quotidian (“daily:” big, fancy words make it sound more impressive) failures be to God’s glory? How can flightiness, foolishness, or any of the other relatives of the monster of the famed loch be to God’s glory? It would be nice if it were, but how?

            This is where the second passage above comes into play. I’m sure that Paul’s “thorn in the flesh”  was far more serious than the things I’ve mentioned, but the real point isn’t how serious the impediment is but the fact that it is. If it interferes with our faith, prevents us from doing something we should, or causes us to do something we shouldn’t, that’s all that’s needed. And the answer is to rejoice in God’s strength and boast of the relatives of Nessie that swim through our lives.

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