Worthwhile Article
This is a good article that I thought was worthwhile to share on my blog. It’s about living obediently in the moment as a believer and not waiting for those "earth-shattering" signs from heaven to get our butts in gear. It’s an article recently published by Radiant Magazine.
http://www.radiantmag.com/article.php?id=114
Add to the Beauty: The Most Obvious
About nine years ago when Troy and I were new homeowners, we were dealing with all the new problems that come with a house. As apartment dwellers, we never thought about how fast grass grows or that a bug-less existence is not an accident. No matter how much I cleaned, cobwebs kept forming in the corners of our dining room, so every Saturday, I would take a rag and jump up and down, swiping at the crown molding. One day Troy walked in while I was jumping. “You know what I need … I need sort of a brush type thing that could be affixed to the end of a long pole,” I said.
“You should invent that, and you could call it a ‘broom,’” Troy said.
When we moved into the house that we are in now, it was the middle of the winter, so we had no idea how hot it would get upstairs in the middle of summer. For two weeks in July, Troy tossed and turned, sighing loudly, until he snuck into the baby’s room to take the small fan that I use for white noise. One night I said to him, “I wish you wouldn’t take the fan out of the baby’s room.”
“I know,” he said. “I need to go to Home Depot and pick up another fan.”
“What’s wrong with that one?” I asked, pointing to the ceiling fan that hangs right over our bed.
Troy looked up at the fan for a long time and finally said, “That’s a fan.”
“Yeah, that’s a fan.”
“I have been lying on my back for two weeks, staring at that fan, wishing I had a fan.”
I don’t want to over-spiritualize a funny story, but I do wonder how many times in my Christian walk I have been staring at a spiritual fan, wishing I had a fan? I wonder how many times I have been looking at an obvious need, something that God wants me to respond to, but I miss it somehow. I wonder how God keeps Himself from rolling His eyes or from saying “Come on!” from heaven every once in a while. So many people are dying for a purpose: to know the will of God. So many of us are walking around with a purpose saying, I wish I had a purpose, or with a gift saying, I wish I had a gift. The more I ask God what I’m supposed to be doing, the more I find the answer surprisingly obvious.
For example, the other day I was talking to my sister about doing a back to school drive, but the whole idea got complicated. We heard of other organizations doing something similar, and in the end, we decided not to do it. So tonight I went shopping for Kirby’s supplies (the K man starts kindergarten this year) and felt bad the whole time about the supply drive I didn’t do. My question to myself now as I type this is, why didn’t I just buy two of everything while I was at Target for someone in Kirby’s class? So I don’t have time to organize a city wide campaign called Toolz for Schoolz, but I was at Target tonight buying school supplies …
Often, if I can’t do everything, I will do nothing. Many inspirations and ideas have died because instead of doing the one thing in front of me, I turned it into something impossible and then failed to do anything at all. At the root of this, there is something slightly sinister… I want to be a part of big things and make big changes, and the obvious stuff isn’t always big or glamorous.
But the obvious things add up. Mother Teresa’s ministry started when she prayed that she would be able to perceive the need. She often told her Sisters, “Open your eyes and see.” Meeting the obvious need was the whole point of her faith in Christ, and the small things mattered. “You can do no great things,” she said, “just small things with great love.” She also realized that obvious things don’t always fit into a schedule. At her many homes for the poor and dying, love did not happen on a schedule, but according to the need. “Charity begins today. Today somebody is suffering, today somebody is in the street, today somebody is hungry … We see a need, we go meet it.”
Jesus spoke plainly; some people could hear Him and others could not. Intelligent, rich, religious people could not understand, while simple, uneducated people could. What sets the Good Samaritan apart from the others, He asked? He responded to the obvious need and demonstrated love in action.
I want to make things more complicated sometimes, but it really is pretty simple. I am learning, and I too am praying that I can open my eyes and see.
Since her debut release in 2001, Sara Groves has become one of the most critically acclaimed artists in the Christian music industry. Along with her music credentials, she is also a well-known humanitarian, helping Hurricane Katrina victims and the poverty emergency in Africa, which is featured in her new reality film titled Sara Groves: Just Showed Up for My Own Life.
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