I
was just thinking about ...
Brown
and blue … they don’t match! Grrr, back into the darkness I go. I grabbed my
handy, dandy flashlight and headed for the bedroom. It’s 5:30 am on Sunday
morning and I’m on a sock hunt. We had washed dark clothes the night before,
but it was late, so we left the sock sorting for the next day when we weren’t
so tired. All four of us wear about the same size so it gets interesting
sometimes. There’s probably a good talk on procrastination here too, but
I’ll leave that for another day.
Now,
this morning, I’m just trying to find my socks with a flashlight. On Sundays,
I’m up at 5:00 am to be fully awake by the time services start. But Kim’s
still asleep and, not wanting to wake her, I dress by flashlight. But today the
socks are all loose and piled together in a clothesbasket in our room. I grabbed
a couple that looked black but when entering the light of the kitchen, I found
one was blue and the other brown. Wow, couldn’t tell that by the light of the
flashlight.
So as
I said above, I grabbed the flashlight and went back to find a matching pair. No
luck again! Nor on the 3rd or 4th time I ventured into the
dark regions of the clothesbasket looking for the elusive pair of matching
socks. Now you remember that Kim was asleep? Well, at this point the emphasis is
on the “was” part of that statement. “What are you looking for?,” she
asked. “Matching socks,” I whispered, as if to say, “You’re only
dreaming, go back to sleep.” “Why don’t you take the basket out into the
light so you can see better.” Hmmm, I looked at the basket in my hands and
could only mutter, “Good idea, hon.” I picked up the basket and headed for
the door, hoping she could get back to sleep. No such luck, for as those words
were leaving my lips, I stumbled over the dog that had decided to sleep where I
needed to walk.
Kim
was now sliding out of bed and followed me out into the kitchen, wondering why I
hadn’t just taken the socks out into the light in the first place. (Probably
what you’re wondering as well right about now. Remember, I told you I get up
at 5:00 am for good reasons.) “God made me do it,” I replied. She shot a
look through slightly cracked open eyes. It was hard to determine how much was
getting used to the light and how much was saying, “I should know better, but
okay, I’ll bite.” “What do you mean, ‘God made you do it’ ”? I then
explained that God must have made me do it, because I received a great lesson
about illumination in mere seconds. She waved a hand at me and headed toward the
stove to make some tea. “I’ll read about it later.” “Good night …
morning … whatever it is.”
I guess I can’t really say that God made me do the shuttle run between
socks in the dark and the light of the kitchen. No, that was just my not being
fully conscious. However, the lesson that came flooding upon me, God gets full
credit for that. In a split second I was hit with this revelation about the
world we live in, and the divine illumination available to us if only we’ll
use it. Try to follow along with me.
We
complain about how hard decisions seem to be in this world. Black and white
issues no longer seem to exist, now matter how hard we try to make them that
way. Some folks compare these issues to shades of gray. But I disagree, I see
them being spread across the spectrum of the rainbow. Each has its distinctive
hue, shade and intensity when viewed in the proper light. But if the light is
limited, it is hard to tell one from another. Do you see where I’m going? How
many times do we try to view the colors of issues in life with the
“flashlight” of human understanding instead of taking them out into the
light of God, powered by God’s unlimited wisdom? Just like my encounter with
the basket of assorted socks, we will be continually frustrated in our attempts
to match the issues and actions in our life if we don’t take them out into the
full light. Don’t settle for batteries when you have the full powerhouse of
the Spirit of God just waiting to illumine your life and give you full sight.
Gotta go for now but,
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