I once read someone compare leaving your house without spending time with God to leaving your house without putting on clothing. Some mornings, like this morning, I sleep a little too long and scramble to do all the “necessary” things in my morning routine. Ironically, what usually gets left out is actually the most important part… spending time with God.
The day didn’t start out well as I snapped at Ryan over something I can’t even now remember. I jokingly thought that I should put a sign on my desk reading “easily irritated today” to give people fair warning. All day I had minor setbacks but managed to keep my irritability mostly in check. I had a couple of hours at home after work before I was to go to a wedding in late afternoon. I worked on cleaning the house but while doing all those “important” things I kept feeling like I should spend some time with God. So I took a few minutes before leaving to pray and read. Have you ever had devotion time where you just weren’t focused? While I may have spent time on my knees and time with the Bible, it wasn’t time with God.
Fast forward another hour or so and I’m at the wedding. I was one of five people who provided the wedding cake as a gift to the happy couple. So when people were starting to leave and the cake hadn’t been cut I felt a bit panicked that people wouldn’t get to eat it! Perhaps that was my first mistake. I felt responsible not just for the ordering of the cake, the purchasing of the cake, and the delivering of the cake, but now for the sharing of the cake! With encouragement from others, I convinced the bride that it was time to cut the cake. Then I thought I’d better just see the whole process to the end, so I grabbed some plates and started helping hand out slices.
Now here is where I went wrong. I thought I knew better how to serve cake than the person (not the bride or groom) who was cutting it. At this point, I had three choices: 1. I could have handed people flavors (there were three different ones) that they didn’t want and sizes they didn’t get to specify; 2. I could have set the plates down and walked away and let someone else deal with the serving; or 3. (which is what I actually did) I tried to reason with the person cutting the cake. If I had reasoned with only kind words, it probably would have been ok, which I did at first but it seemed to have no effect. With no where to put all the cake plates that people didn’t want and the person cutting the cake not willing to listen to me, I then said and did something rather rude and the person put down the cutting utensils and left. I immediately felt that I had not handled the situation the way Jesus would have wanted. After everyone else was served, I looked around for this person to apologize but I guess they had left the party. While I’m still not sure what the best course of action would have been, I do know that what I said and did was not, in God’s eyes, the correct choice.
In the past, I’ve had people tell me how kind I am, or how nice, or how understanding, etc. and when people say those things to me I often remind them that they don’t know my heart. Jesus said, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God” (Luke 18:19). Days like today remind me of this scripture. The only way any of us, including myself, can be “good” is to be an open channel for the love of God. We can only have that connection with Him by spending time with Him. If we put Him on the back burner and don’t consider Him a necessity before we walk out the door, then we deceive ourselves and walk around naked. I wish I had taken time this morning to spend with God even if that meant not eating breakfast or showering. I wonder if my day would have ended differently. Let us each day put on the armor of God before going out not just to protect us from the arrows of the world but to remind us that in our duties in life, both big and small, we are to show how God is love.