Culturally Irrelevant

My kids have stretched me farther than I ever thought I could be stretched. They have an uncanny ability to expose my impatience, to challenge my need for order and cleanliness, and to make sure my wife and I are out of bed on time every morning. This morning I wasn’t feeling well. As I sat across from John in his high chair and watched him eat a banana, I so badly wanted to go crawl back in bed and sleep it off. Not an option, Dad! So, instead, John and I spent 15 minutes making beat-box sounds, mooing like cows and calling for Mommy and Jack to come downstairs, all while eating a banana and a bowl of Life cereal. For some reason I feel better. Maybe I just woke up, or maybe I just pushed through it. I wonder how much more stuff I could push through if I had to.

When I peel that onion back another layer, here’s what I see. Life and ministry happen in every season. I realize we all need times of rest; we need getaways to recharge our batteries. But inevitably, whether we’re happy or sad, rested or exhausted, excited or bored, inspired or empty, life and ministry still go on. We won’t feel our best or look our best, but we still have the ability by God’s grace to do what needs to be done. This might be a stretch, but it reminds me of what my old soccer coach told me. “Watts”, he’d say, “that ball isn’t always gonna come at you just like you want it.” And that’s just about how this all goes. It comes at us all weird sometimes, but because of the joy and patience and love of the Holy Spirit, we can be flexible and effective. We can make good contact with the ball even when it’s not exactly where we want it to be.

Our neighbor’s snow “family” went untouched all day. I guess our kids are a little different.