Three questions:
1. Do you know how hard it is to embrace your grandchildren (or anyone else for that matter) when your arms are full of groceries?
2. Do you know how hard it is to worship God when your mind is full of other things?
3. Do you know how hard it is to have compassion for the world when your arms are clutching all you own?
Okay, question #4: What would happen if you put down all those things and with open arms embraced the one (The One) in front of you?
4 comments:
My immediate thought (This is Caleb Werner by the way), was "you break the eggs". I understand what I think you're getting at, put aside what *you* value so you can further relationship with the one (The One) in front of you, but what happens when you have no safe place to set the groceries down? You break the eggs if you just drop them...
How important should we view those aspects God has charged us with? Responsibilities that we need to ensure are fulfilled?
I suppose in the case of God you do whatever you need to to ensure a furthering of your relationship... But the analogy confuses me with the grandchild and the world...
I suppose correct prioritizing fixes it all though...
Good post.
Hi Caleb, Thanks for responding to the post. Here's my thought: the groceries in the arms is but a metaphor, for the second and third question. Our minds are often so full of things, we fail to do the right thing: love God. Likewise we clutch so tightly all our things, we fail to embrace (show compassion to) the world around us. Questions 2 & 3 have the two greatest commandments as their base: love God with all your heart soul and mind, love your neighbor.
To be sure we must do the responsible in lfe. Unfortunately, we've cluttered our lives with the unimportant. Lastly, the point of the first question was an attempt to get one in the picture right away: full lives keep us from accomplishing the most important–relationship is everything!
Blessings,
Doug
In the Beth Moore bible study "Stepping Up" pg.169
"The more we learn about God, the more we understand that the primary reason He asks us to surrender everything to Him is to make room to receive what He wants to give. Try as we may, we will never bring anything to God and leave empty handed...
God wants to increase our awareness that every time we bless Him He offers a disproportionate blessing to us. God doesn't consider us selfish and immature when we admit we want His blessing! He considers us obedient."
I know it doesn't exactly answer the question you've posed. But it does confirm that God is faithful when we surrender to Him the things He has given us.
What does it matter if we drop our groceries and break the eggs,etc. Why do we hold on to material things we love or do things that are only for our benefit and pleasure these things mean nothing in the eyes of God. As I have come to know by personal experience, and things you have said to us in Choir it's all about the relationship. If we don't have a relationship with Jesus Christ our Savior we have "NOTHING." I have found that often times looking back after doing things I thought were important that I missed out on the greatest opportunities to do something wonderful for someone else. So often as Christians we know what is the right thing to do in our daily walk to make a difference in someone else's life or to do as God would would want us to do but as you said our minds are so filled
with so many things that we fail to do the right thing at the right time. Thanks for being a Guiding Light and redirecting us to where we need to be going daily.
Marci Horton
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