The Path of Least Restistance

I had one of those verbal tugs of war with one of my children the other day. If you are a parent, you may know to what I refer :

You say: Please do the dish washer.
He/she says: It’s not my turn
You say: It doesn’t matter. Please do it.
He/she says: But it isn’t my tu-hurn. (Said a little more adamantly, as if turning up the volume will help you understand that it really isn’t his/her tu-hurn.)
You say with feigned patience: I don’t recall asking you if it was your turn. Please empty the dishwasher.
He/she says (please insert a whiney tone here): Why do I always have to do it?
You say (insert growing exasperation): You don’t always have to do the dishwasher. Please just empty the dishwasher. It will take fifteen minutes.
He/she says: No it won’t. It will take an hour. It always takes me an hour.
Of course, by now, you don’t care if he/she has emptied every dishwasher in the western hemisphere every day since birth, you will not budge from your request. Sorry I shouldn’t say “you.” Replace the “you” with “I.”
You say (no longer hiding your impatience): It will take as long as you want it to take dear. Now, please get moving.
At this point, if you have a really stubborn one, or a literalist, they might say something like…"I am moving” (flailing arms up and down).
You say (open frustration and rising anger): You know what I mean. Do the dishwasher and do it now.
He/she says (with surprise and exaggerated hurt): You don’t have to get mean and mad. I’m doing it. (starts to empty dishwasher on super slow speed and lots of clattering)

By now, perhaps thirty minutes have gone by and the dishwasher is still not done. Or, he/she slams dishwasher door closed and says “I’m done” but has left three or four plates and cups in the trays. I am quite sure, upon my inspection, that leaving the last few plates and cups was just passive aggressive behavior. Passive on the part of my child, and inciting aggression on my part.

Sigh. When this event took place in my house the other day, my child sniveled as he/she emptied the dishwasher “why does it always take so long?” I replied, admittedly, a little smugly, “disobedience always takes longer than obedience.”

It was at this moment that I heard it. “Did you hear what you just said?” Have you ever had that experience where you say something that you know is truth to your child and it comes resounding back at you, nearly slapping you in the face, as though the words came off of a great big bouncing wall? Of course I heard it…I said it, and, unfortunately, I live it. My (whiney) question is: if I know disobedience always takes longer, and I know that I am impatient and want to get about the business of the fun part, then why do I complain and disobey. I know better. So, why, I wonder, do I not do better?

Ah yes…disobedience always takes longer than obedience. The classic and most prominent example of this very basic and painfully necessary tenet of life is found in the story of the Israelites. Forty years! Forty years! Forty years of complaining, whining, arguing, disbelief and disobedience on what we know should have been an eleven day journey. If it wasn’t the water, it was the food. If it wasn’t the heat, it was the rain. If it wasn’t the place they were, it was the place they left behind or the place they were going. And, when they couldn’t think of anything new to complain about, they complained about the woman Moses married. There was always something.

I am of the opinion that the natural state of the flesh is to complain. That’s why we all squirm when we read the verse, “do everything without complaining.” (Phil. 2:14) You must be kidding, Lord! EVERYTHING? Everything. But, but but…no, there are no buts. See, we’ll always find something to complain about. If it isn’t the fact that we’ve done the dishwasher three days in a row, then the dishwasher wasn’t loaded properly, or the dishes are still too hot, or it is too late to start this chore or it is too early to do this chore or there is too much homework. And to bring it to my level, maybe the complaint is about not having the newest or best dishwasher. We complain, because if we complain, we can stave off the call to obey for a little longer. And obedience is what we are trying to delay, if not completely avoid, after all.

No one complains about doing things they enjoy. My kids never complain if I make them eat a freshly cooked meal…it’s the leftovers they complain about. They do not complain if I invite my girls to go clothes shopping without any financial limits. It is when we have to go to the Good Will store on half price Wednesday that the grousing begins. It isn’t when I get to be kind to my dearest friend that I complain; it is when I have to be kind and gracious to the someone I really do not care for that it brings out the whiner in me. It is not when I am living in plenty that I make snippy remarks to my husband, it is when I cannot figure out how to work a vacation into the budget. Obedience, not complaining, not grumbling, by its very nature is hard. That is why the linguists have given us separate words for “obedience” and “fun.”

And for all of the above reasons, God made complaining a sin. Because complaining is just a way to get around God’s perfect will for us to love our neighbors as ourselves, to obey God more than we want to bow down to our idols of comfort, convenience, fear and self. Unfortunately, complaining just takes us around the desert for forty years or so. Obedience really is the path of least resistance.

Well, I would love to go and tell more stories on my beloved children but, I think I have to go and empty a dishwasher…without whining and complaining.

Turning the Page

Happy New Year, friends. It is a new year, a new decade. The standard talk at this time is ring out the old, bring in the new, the new start, the fresh page, the looking ahead, forgetting the things of last year. But, what if the newest start you have is the new calendar page? What if the freshest page you have is the new calendar page? What if even the new page is scribbled with the messy markings of last year’s pain, disappointment, and struggle? Perhaps we are still dealing with the same set of sins, pains, difficulties and failures of last year. Sounds like a bit of a downer, doesn’t it? It isn’t actually. It could be a cause for consternation, but it isn’t.

This is the good news: We have the same God of last year, the year before that and the year before that. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8) That is a wonderful confidence to hide in our hearts as we possibly face the same set of difficulties and circumstances of 2009, and yet turn the page into 2010. Beloved, God is the God of yesterday’s page and the God of today’s page and the God of tomorrow’s page. All of our pages are written by Him.

Several years ago, I stood in the church where my husband had recently been installed as an associate pastor. He was performing his first baptism as a part of this church and it was with a mixture of pride and humility that I watched from the second row. Standing directly in front of me was a man from the congregation videotaping the entire baptism. Next to him was someone with a digital camera, also commemorating the event, which was a mere shadow of the party the angels in heaven were simultaneously enjoying. At the moment the new convert came out of the water the church erupted into applause and praise, the Lord quietly whispered something into my ear: “Ellen, you take pictures of things that are happening so you can one day look back and remember them.” (I’m a scrapbooker, so God was totally speaking my language.) “But, I have a scrapbook filled with pictures of things that will be. There is nothing that happens today, yesterday or even tomorrow for which I need a camera to record the event. This day is just a picture on the page in my scrapbook, flipped open to today.”

The word of God says in psalm 139:16 “all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Beloved, every one of your days, present, past and future, yesterday, today and tomorrow already are a page in God’s scrapbook. That speaks to us of God’s sovereignty, His plan for us, His care and love for us. We are familiar with the verses from Jeremiah 29:11 which say that “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” These words were written to a people in captivity and in exile. God told them as oppression and exile started, “in seventy years, I am going to free you. I’m going to turn 70 x 365 days worth of pages and on that page will be written the day of freedom and return to Jerusalem.” Every one of the days of captivity, exile, and oppression were already written in His book. Beloved, every day of your days of unemployment, sickness, relational problems, estrangement from loved ones, uncertainty in economic trouble, name it, that paragraph on the page, that picture on the page is already in God’s scrapbook. He knows, He cares; we are in His hands. He already knows the day of freedom, the day of breakthrough, the day of reunion, the day the new job comes, the day of release from financial bondage. His plans for us are for good, for a hope, for a future, plans to prosper us, not to harm us. He knows. Our Saviour knows! He is in loving control.

So what then? As a famous Christian apologist of this century wrote, “how shall we then live?” Knowing that our lives are not random happenings, that our lives are not strung together by happenstance and entropic circumstances, that, in fact, we live in the care of a sovereign, able, wise, and loving God who is daily turning the pages of our scrapbooks into the new pages of each day, beloved, we rejoice, and proclaim: praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Go ahead; turn the page into tomorrow, knowing that every day ordained for you has already been written in His book, by His sovereign hand.