It amazes, the little things we remember. In the kitchen Sunday night as I was preparing dinner, I remembered a scene from a movie I saw years ago, Anne Hathaway’s Rachel Getting Married. In this particular scene, the dad is challenged by the groom on the best way to load the dishwasher. The scene is an intimate one between close family and friends as the new man in Rachel’s life thinks he can do a task that the father has done for years. Thus, the challenge begins. The basis is that they can’t load all 40 plus dishes (and this is an abstract number) into the dishwasher to get it to full capacity where they don’t have to run two loads. Unfortunately for the groom he fails at the task and has too hand over the reins to dad whom playfully laughs at his attempts and successfully loads the dishwasher to a round of cheers and a concession from the groom. This scene makes me stop and think of what other wheel are we trying to invent. My answer comes in a quiet whisper...” salvation”. Obtaining salvation isn’t hard. However, I think that many believe maintaining it is. Salvation in its most basic definition is the saving of people from death or the separation from God. Being saved isn’t as hard as we think. Especially when we stop trying to reinvent the wheel and do things our way. Prior to the challenge in the movie, the dad tries to tell the groom the best way to go about the loading. But as typical of humans he ignores him and lets him know that he got it. Yeah, right. We as Christians however do the same with God every day. He comes in and whispers to do something, go a certain way, stay still, or a myriad of instructions. When we ignore these instructions, we are telling Him I got this. And in His way, God will sit back and let us fall. Being merciful, He will come back and tell us how to rectify our mistakes. What a God we serve! This is in no way an excuse for us to continue down a path of ignoring God’s voice. It is in fact a reminder to us to listen to the gentle instructions carried on the still small voice within us. The obtaining and maintaining of Salvation is not in fact hard. It’s the listening and following, the obedience that is. I decided to wash my car today and clean the interior. As I was cleaning the interior, I heard God say to put down a window just in case I locked myself out of the car. My first thought was “huh” but my next was ok. So, I let down two windows. Low and behold no sooner than I shut my door, it locked. I thought I had left the doors in the unlock position but with the key in the ignition, click. Just as I went to the trunk to get supplies, I realized that I was locked out. My smile couldn’t be contained as I thanked God for his instructions. My second set of keys was in the house not far away but far enough that it would have been an inconvenience to go get them. Following God and being obedient can be that simple. You may say that your problem is bigger than that. My answer would be in question form, “Is it bigger than God?” If your answer is no, then the answer to your issue is that simple. Listen, hear, obtain the information given, process it, and follow it. These 6 steps are usually done within minutes. What’s a few minutes compared to a lifetime, season, moment, time of unhappiness, anxiety, depression, and all those other unwanted feelings. I’ll take the few minutes with God over the minutes, hours, days, months, years of grief.
Be A Blessing and Not Just Blessed
- - Nakya