Some things are just simple; you are hungry so you eat a sandwich, you are sleepy so you take a nap, or you are bored so you check out what's not happening on Facebook. But there are other things that are just not that simple. They seem to really throw a wrench in your routine and you just aren't sure what to do about them. You scratch your head, take a step back, phone a friend, talk to the preacher, but you still aren't really sure what to do.
I had an experience similar to this last week. It wasn't a call-your-pastor moment, but I did need guidance. I was working in a ladies house and she wanted me to change some electrical switches out. Easy, right? Well, typically it's not that difficult, for someone who is savvy with electrical work. Painting, sheetrock, plumbing, I can deal with, but electrical has never really been an area I've spent alot of time in. Can I maneuver around the basics? Sure. I accepted the challenge, thinking that this would be one of the easiest parts of the job.
3 trips to Lowes, 100 trips to the circuit breaker, and alot of Google research later, I finally finished changing out the switches. There was a key lesson I learned while doing this; follow the directions, regardless of how you feel about them.
When I pulled the old switches out and replaced them with the new switches, the lights didn't respond correctly. I looked up the diagrams for the particular configurations of the switches, and they did not match up to what I was seeing in the boxes. At first, and for a long time, I tried to reconcile the new switches with the old way of wiring. It simply would not work. So, swallowing my pride and alot of my confidence, I followed the diagrams exactly. This flew in the face of reason because the original switches were wired differently. This "new" way was throwing me off. But once I submitted to that plan, all of the switches worked correctly and I received a job well done.
There are countless debates over the bible right now. Things about Creation, abortion, homosexuality, marriage, divorce, children, elderly, leaders, servants, disciples, reprobates, and the list goes on and on. We sit in churches and classrooms and talk about these things day in and day out, most of the time leaving more confused than when we arrived.
If there is one thing that I learned from my electrical experience it was this; no matter how odd the instructions are, and no matter how much they fly in the face of the way things have always been, we are called to live by them. The end result is a follower of Jesus who still may not fully understand everything (which it's okay not to) and stands firm in what he does believe.
"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path, and I will hide its words in my heart, that I might not sin against God."
God is polarizing. No, he doesn't make things magnetic, or decide where Santa Claus lives, but he does cause people to make a choice. He very clearly states what He is about in His word, and that forces people, at some time or another, to make a choice about Him. What is difficult about walking with Jesus is when we are asked to go against our longstanding traditions of pride and self-entitlement to become servants of others. That's much harder than baking your neighbor an apple pie. But it's worth it, oh my, is it worth it.
There is simplicity in following Jesus that many find too simple and so we complicate it. Like me trying to reconcile the old wiring with the new, we cannot force our old ways, thoughts, behaviors, and actions to mesh with Jesus. It just doesn't work.
"And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”
No comments:
Post a Comment