The combined effect of Jesus and children has really messed
up my life! I like order and
clarity. I used to have a bit of
that. I remember a time not so long ago
when I would put things where they go, and they would actually stay there until
I moved them again. I remember a time when my body would actually
stay asleep past 5:30 a.m., when I would start doing something and actually
finish it, when I would spend uninterrupted hours on the same task, when I
would string together lots of little intellectual thoughts for seminary papers
and churn out those papers one right after the other.
I’m
thankful for that season . . . that spring season, planting time, when God
turned over the soil of my life and used that season to prepare me for the
next. He’s so good like that. Always going before us, forming us, preparing
us. Spring prepares for summer. Summer prepares for fall.
It was in
that season that He gently showed me that I had been “content” (complacent)
with my version of Christianity. I had
been content with the idea of lots and lots of pockets of luxury—the primary
luxury being “free” time—“my” time that I could “control.” Jesus shifted my paradigm—my grid for my
life. He did it gradually. He did it instantly. He still does it. I’m so thankful that he “messes up” my
life.
He showed
me my desperate need for Him all day every day.
He showed me that my “old Christianity” only works in a vacuum where
there are no demands on my life. He
loved me too much to let me stay there, and he brought me to a new season, a
place where my rough edges can be smoothed by the sandpaper of little people
who live with me all the time and big people too who don’t think just like I
do. He gives me a place to get
stretched, bothered, misunderstood, and overwhelmed in a good kind of way. It’s a way that slowly looks more like the Kingdom of God than the kingdom of self.
I’ve been
reading the gospel of Mark, and I love how it does something to me every time I
read it. In Mark 2 (and all over the gospels)
Jesus messes with the religious folks’ thinking too. He forgives sins, calls a tax collector,
invites the scum of the earth to eat with him, doesn’t fast like “they” think
he should, harvests on the Sabbath. It’s
a paradigm shift of gigantic proportions.
It got me
thinking . . . is what I think is good and righteous truly the way of the
cross, the way of Jesus, or is it fraudulent self-righteousness instead? In short, where am I the Pharisee who has
tragically, sadly missed Him? “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith;
test yourselves” (2 Cor. 13:5 NIV).
You don’t
have to have children or a husband to have this good kind of messed up life, but
you must have Jesus. You must make room
for the Savior to come in and shift your paradigm and move you to the next
season.
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