Sitting at the Messy Table
Check out yesterday's Baby Blues. As Bill Cosby once said, "Those of you with or without children, you'll understand."
We went out to dinner last night after church with the girls and with Heidi and Hannah from church. We went to Pizza Hut, which means it was already a mess waiting to happen (I mean, my kids and pizza sauce...)
Both girls were really well behaved, but we needed the extra round of napkins, that's for sure. Happens every time. There's something about being a kid that is just plain messy. I don't know if it's a lack of coordination that gets the pizza sauce not only all over the face, but the clothes, the table, the floor, or if it's just that they haven't learned to be self conscious about wearing the food they've obviously enjoyed. Even at seven, Rachel still ends up wearing her dinner. And, really, give Elie some chocolate pudding some time...it's a sight to behold.
Dinner with the kids is messy. But it's fun, too. If I can just settle in and realize that Elie is going to squirm out of her chair no less than a hundred times in the first half hour, that the girls will ask forty two times when is our food coming, and then eat it so fast that I swear (and I swore I'd never say this to MY kids) they didn't stop to chew it. I know they're going to have to go to the bathroom at least three times, and one of those times it will be "an emergency" (usually the second time they go - don't ask me why...). If I can just realize they're not grown up and stop trying to get them to act like they're 30-something, then dinner is downright fun. I love the newness of what my girls do - the innocence of who they are. Everything is an experiment - an experience - an opportunity to learn and live and even fail (no, you can't suck pizza through a straw...or whatever).
So, I'm thinking. Life is really messy, too. How many times have I been with someone who has no realtionship at all with God and expected them to, what did my mom used to say, "straighten up and fly right." I'm just thinking about one of those really troubling passages in the Bible - you know, those things Jesus said that I wish he hadn't said (or at least would have explained a little more).
In Mark, the disciples ask Jesus about teaching in parables, and Jesus says,
Dinner with the kids is messy. But it's fun, too. If I can just settle in and realize that Elie is going to squirm out of her chair no less than a hundred times in the first half hour, that the girls will ask forty two times when is our food coming, and then eat it so fast that I swear (and I swore I'd never say this to MY kids) they didn't stop to chew it. I know they're going to have to go to the bathroom at least three times, and one of those times it will be "an emergency" (usually the second time they go - don't ask me why...). If I can just realize they're not grown up and stop trying to get them to act like they're 30-something, then dinner is downright fun. I love the newness of what my girls do - the innocence of who they are. Everything is an experiment - an experience - an opportunity to learn and live and even fail (no, you can't suck pizza through a straw...or whatever).
So, I'm thinking. Life is really messy, too. How many times have I been with someone who has no realtionship at all with God and expected them to, what did my mom used to say, "straighten up and fly right." I'm just thinking about one of those really troubling passages in the Bible - you know, those things Jesus said that I wish he hadn't said (or at least would have explained a little more).
In Mark, the disciples ask Jesus about teaching in parables, and Jesus says,
To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that
'they may indeed look, but not perceive,
and may indeed listen, but not understand;
so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.'
REALLLY???!??!!?!?
Did Jesus REALLY say that? Argh!! But here's the thing (I think) - Jesus is calling up Isaiah's calling to the prophetic ministry (Isaiah 6) where (and I'm paraphrasing here) God says, "Who can I send?" And Isaiah says, "Send me!" And God says, in essence, you're going to tell them and tell them and show them and show them and they're not going to listen, they're not going to change. And Isaiah says, and I'm quoting here, "How long?"
You see, Jesus knows that people are pretty stuck in their ways, stuck in their mindset. We know what we know and we don't want to know anything else... But the parables hint at the truth - and if we are willing to seek the truth, it will be revealed (not a "secret" in the sense that is it something kept from you, rather a secret in the sense that it is something revealed by God to you).
So, the point? Well, lots of folk are still at the messy table, still either spiritually unsophisticated or spiritually unconcerned (or maybe even spiritually unaware) and we really can't expect them to act all grown up now, can we? I mean, is that fair?
Elie's not 24 - she's 4. She's going to blow bubbles in her milk. Rachel's 7, she's going to drop pizza down the front of her shirt. It's gonna be messy.
I have a friend who's trying. He's still pretty rough around the edges, but God is touching his life and calling him into deeper relationship. But he's not sitting at the grownup table yet - truth is, he might not ever. It's sometimes messy with him. But, his life is an adventure with God now - it's, what did I just write?, "an experiment - an experience - an opportunity to learn and live and even fail..."
And I'm so glad I get to sit at the messy table with him.
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