Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Still chewing....

Yesterday I posted that I was "chewing" on a verse that was giving me pause. It's that whole mustard seed faith verse in Luke 17 and today I woke up with it on my mind. Well, that's not exactly true. I woke up with coffee on my mind and wishing that I could sleep a couple more hours. (In the words of my husband, why can't Labor Day be Labor Week....but I digress.)

After a cup of coffee, or three, I did, however, find myself chewing on that verse from yesterday. I am still trying to figure out what happened to my faith! If God said He gave it to me and basically a little dab will do ya, then why am I not seeing it more evident in my life?

Of course as will happen in the morning, the clock hands spin faster than they do toward the end of the day and before I knew it I had to put my thoughts away and hit the showers, get the kids up, pack lunches, make breakfast - typical mom morning kind of stuff. At one point I went to my daughter's room to wake her and discovered that she STILL had not cleaned her room. For the past two weeks she's told me, "I'm going to do it today." Evidently "today" is some new time of year that we haven't experienced yet because the room still isn't clean! Today it even smelled kind of funny. I walked away from my daughter's room feeling quite frustrated.

It was about this time that my son came running through the house half dressed to get to the laundry room. How many times have I told him to take his clean laundry to his room? I'd even taken some there the day before! Why was he still making this mad dash to the laundry room all the way across the house? My frustration started to build.

It's usually about this point that I feel that "nudge." You know the one. The one that is the Lord getting your attention. I could almost hear an audible voice say, "It's frustrating, isn't it." 

Yes, Lord, it is! I'm not asking for anything difficult, but my teenagers still seem to be struggling to get the basics on a regular basis...and I can't possibly trust them with the big stuff when they still haven't gotten this...and oh-h-h-h....now I get it. That's what it must be like when You look at me, God. I still haven't "cleaned my room" and I haven't taken care to put what You've already blessed me with in its proper place. I'm still struggling with the basics. Whose got time to talk to sycamore trees when they are still not done with the last thing they were told to do?

Is it possible that the reason I'm not seeing more evidence of my faith is because I still haven't finished the last thing God told me to do; I still haven't done the basics?

Looks like I've got some more chewing to do on this verse. Please feel free to chew along with me. Maybe by the weekend we'll finish a small bite.

Luke 17:6-10 (Msg)
But the Master said, “You don’t need more faith. There is no ‘more’ or ‘less’ in faith. If you have a bare kernel of faith, say the size of a poppy seed, you could say to this sycamore tree, ‘Go jump in the lake,’ and it would do it.
“Suppose one of you has a servant who comes in from plowing the field or tending the sheep. Would you take his coat, set the table, and say, ‘Sit down and eat’? Wouldn’t you be more likely to say, ‘Prepare dinner; change your clothes and wait table for me until I’ve finished my coffee; then go to the kitchen and have your supper’? Does the servant get special thanks for doing what’s expected of him? It’s the same with you. When you’ve done everything expected of you, be matter-of-fact and say, ‘The work is done. What we were told to do, we did.’”

No comments: