Boxes and crosses

            I woke up. Uggggggghhh.  My head. My throat.  All of me.  I considered rolling over and sleeping some more, but there was work to be done.  Always work.  And so I marched dutifully into my day.

I took some cold medicine.  Maybe then I’d feel better.

I got some work done.  At least I felt productive.

I did some unexpected, hard work.  Hey, I didn’t complain.  Go me.  Renee has an agenda, and she’s going to get it done.  I kept on going.

            Moving onto my next task, I dropped a bag of stuff off with a friend.  But she didn’t let me move straight on to the following chore.  She stopped me and we talked.  And thank goodness.  It’s like she knew.  She saw me marching out to battle, but noticed I was battling the wrong things and had grabbed the wrong weapons.  My enemies: time and tasks.  My weapons:                .  That’s right.  Nothing.  I had no weapons.

            “Renee,” she said to me.  “If we watch the children, but we don’t have Christ, our work is nothing.  More than anything, more than everything, we need to receive the love of Christ and give the love of Christ.  Daily.  Without it, our work is nothing.”

            In my mind I perused my day.  Christ?  Nope, hadn’t been there.  I forgot to invite him.

I woke up sick, I took medicine.

I had work to do, Renee did it alone.

Unexpected jobs?  I bucked up and dealt with them.

I had reduced my work to a list of defined tasks that I thought I, in my puny power, could accomplish.  And from my human perspective, I did them.

            But my friend challenged me.  Was my work really a list of finite jobs and chores that I could box up and then check off?  Or am I called every day to take up an awkward, bulky cross and follow Christ?

            How many times do I see the cross Jesus asks me to carry and say, “I can take that, I’m strong enough.  But first, let me simplify.  We’ll rearrange the cross and reduce it to a box, because that’s easier to carry.”  But in chopping off the limbs of the cross and bundling them up, I’ve missed the point.  Christ not only took on the weight of my sin, he carried the shape too.  He absorbed the wrath of God and he addresses my heart.  It would have been easier, I’m sure, for him to just have been my propitiation.  But he’s more; he’s my sanctification.  He’s sent his Spirit to abide in and work through me.

            And so the cross that Jesus asks me to carry is a cross that requires loving the children, not merely watching them.  Such a cross includes cheerfulness, not simply dutiful doing.  Such a cross calls for submitting my circumstances to God, not taking some cold medicine.  Such a cross insists upon Christ’s presence every moment of the day.

            Humanly speaking, yesterday I seemed to be winning my battle.  I was slashing and slaying tasks left and right, charging ahead dauntlessly though wounded and ragged.  But I doubt that’s the way God saw my day.  I’m sure a looked like a child with a feather for a sword and a piece of paper as a shield, charging into a dandelion field “slaying” my foes and watching the white tops fall to the ground in satisfaction.
            And to this naïve warrior, my friend came, calling sweetly, “Renee, look to Christ.  He blesses your work, he gives it meaning.  He bestows wisdom and power for the complicated range of emotions for which he asks you to care.  He gives rest to the weary and the sick.  Come, abide in him.”

            I walked away from that encounter humbled.  My checked off to do list was now rubbish, because it was no longer the enemy.  My new enemy, my attitude, was a little more shadowy, and a lot less defined.

But my new weapons, they are so much better.  In one hand, I grasp the Word of God, and in the other, I hold his hand.

Plans

The plan was so simple: read facebook statuses for a few minutes and then head to bed early to catch up on my growing sleep deficit.  As I sat down to accomplish my plan, a flash of lighting darted in my window followed by a boom of thunder that shook my kitchen walls.  Ahhhhh, a storm.  I stood up and went to my kitchen door to enjoy the storm that surrounded the ranch from every side.  And as I watched, it came closer until the rain began to parade noisily on my tin roof.  I sighed and listened to the cannoning thunder.  As I listened, a different thud made its way to my ears.  Someone was knocking on my door that connects to the girls’ dorm.

            Not excited in the least about this development, I went to see what was up.  I opened the door to find two girls about eleven or ten years old wrapped in their blankets and looking at me with scared eyes.

            “We can’t sleep, Renee.  The lights keep on flickering on and off and the thunder is so loud and scary.”

            My plan for an early bedtime had not foreseen this, but I thought I might be able to salvage the situation.

            “Aw, I’m sorry.  You know what, though?  I love thunder storms because God is showing his power and if God’s on my side and that’s how powerful he is, I know I don’t have to be afraid.  He’ll protect me.”

            They blinked back at me, completely unappeased with my half-hearted attempt to comfort them and something in my heart whispered that this wasn’t a time to dismiss their fears and send them back to bed.  This meant that my early bedtime plan was now on life support.  My only hope was that the storm would pass quickly.

            I let them in my room and we sat on my floor and began to talk.  They explained to me all the things they were afraid of; the figures they saw in dark corners, the tales that haunted their sleep, the imaginings that kept them awake at night.  And they asked.  They asked why I wasn’t afraid, they asked if the things they feared were real, and what they could do when they were afraid.

            And as the storm outside slowly quieted, I told them.  I told them that I was afraid sometimes, I told them that the things they feared were real sometimes, but that we have a shelter in the storm always, a God to whom even the darkness is not dark.  We talked about the devil, his limited power, and his desire to make us fear him instead of God.  But I got to tell them with confidence that my God is greater than this devil who tries to make us tremble in fear.  My God wants us to tremble in awe and worship at his great love that envelops us when he could and should smite us.

            As I told them about my God, they asked more questions.  How was I patient with them?  How could they learn to be patient with others?  How come I didn’t seem to get very angry, but when they promised themselves they would curb their temper, they couldn’t?

            We sat in my room, talking as it grew later.  And when the storm had finally abated and when all of our eyelids began slipping down our eyes, we sank into our beds.

Right before I fell asleep, I looked at the time.  Definitely much later than I had planned to go to bed.

But when I thought about it, I realized I had just gained something better than a few hours of sleep.  I just had the chance to talk to two of the girls personally about my great God.  And this time, unlike so many others, I wasn’t the one starting the conversation, they were.  They wanted to know more about this God.  They wanted to know how he touches their lives.  And if my plans have to be derailed for that to happen, it’s more than okay with me.

"Even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as day,

for darkness is as light with you."

-Psalm 139:12