Daily Devotions

If you want to have a clean, orderly house, and a calm, peaceful life, don’t have children. Your sleep will be un-interrupted, your walls will remain free of grubby hand-prints, your nice wood tables will never get water-rings on them, and the carpets will last forever. Without children, your living room will finally look exactly like that photograph in the IKEA catalog (or Southern Living, or Better Homes and Gardens).

Of course, in doing so you will never experience the incredible blessing that children bring into our lives. It’s chaotic and crazy and completely overwhelming, but being a parent is one of the greatest joys in life. Having children is part of God’s plan for us as humans, which is why the pain of infertility is so deep and so real. Not being able to partake fully of this blessing (snotty noses, dirty feet, cracked plates and all) is a significant loss.

Life is messy, but that’s part and parcel of the world we live in. If we want to see God work in our lives, we have to be willing to let go of our desire to control everything.

Where there are no oxen, the manger is empty,
but from the strength of an ox come abundant harvests.
(Proverbs 14:4)       

Please hear me clearly--children are not livestock! We don’t use them for cheap labor (well, not much). And even they are cleaner than oxen are. However, the underlying principle is the same. Just as there can’t be a harvest without oxen to plough the fields, you can’t have a “next generation” without dirty diapers, stomach aches, missed curfews and broken hearts.

We spend untold amounts of time, energy, and effort trying to avoid mess—obsessively cleaning our home and our hands, creating and re-creating endless new systems for organizing our lives, yelling at our children for “messing things up,” and constantly sanitizing everything in sight (including some products that now promise to sanitize the very air we breathe).

However, it’s out of mess that God often works to bring incredible blessing and growth. As you read through Acts and Paul’s letters to the early church, the mess created by these first Christian communities is sometimes astonishing. And yet it was through those first believers that God worked to grow and establish the Church and begin to grow His Kingdom. He didn’t drop it down from Heaven, clean, shiny and un-contaminated by human touch. He chose instead to work through deeply flawed people, thrown together into messy, broken communities.

How has your desire for things to be “neat and tidy” impacted your relationships with others or led to decisions you now regret? What are some ways in which a desire for control has kept you from following through on things God has called you to do?

One day Jesus will return and restore everything to pristine perfection. There will be no more lying, no more cheating, no more ox mangers to clean, and no more half-eaten yogurt snacks left under the couch for a week while you wonder what on earth that smell is. It will be a glorious day.

In the meantime, I have to go wash my hands—I don’t know where this keyboard has been. 

Now that Spring has finally arrived (I think), my children are learning more and more about basic gardening. For example, although the indoor plants may only need watering once a week, if the flowers which sit in full sun by the front door are not watered on a regular basis, then they will wilt and die. I already know that come the end of the summer they’ll be searching for tomatoes out in the backyard, but if their father doesn’t plant any soon, the only fruit they’ll be eating will be coming from Jewel.

The Bible is filled with agricultural metaphors. Jesus told His disciples, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit” (John 15:5). Although we’re inclined to go our own way and persevere under our own strength, Jesus likens such behavior to a branch trying to grow and bear fruit apart from the rest of the vine--it’s simply not possible. As Jesus says, “apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

Although all of this may seem painfully basic and obvious, how well do our lives actually reflect such total dependence on God? We want to be people of great faith, but how much time do we invest in the work of prayer? We want to be people of the Word, but how much effort do we put into reading and studying the Bible? We want to be people of influence and impact, but how much time are we willing to venture in the lives of others?

How can we expect to harvest without sowing any seed? 

Those who work their land will have abundant food,
but those who chase fantasies have no sense.
(Proverbs 12:11)

 Sluggards do not plow in season;
so at harvest time they look but find nothing.
(Proverbs 20:4)

Expecting spiritual growth without being willing to invest any time, energy or effort into the process is like “chasing a fantasy.” It’s akin to my youngest daughter planting a stick in the ground and expecting it to turn into a tree. We can’t hope to see spiritual fruit while failing to cultivate the ground it grows best in.

This is spiritual laziness, and outside of the Spirit’s work in our lives, it’s our default mode of living. We’ll gladly sacrifice sleep in order to watch a show or finish watching a movie, but balk at the prospect of getting up half an hour early to read the Bible. We somehow always have time to check email before going to bed, but taking time to pray somehow seems to elude us.

Sow in season. Work the land. Make the sacrifice and spend yourself in the pursuit of God. It’s the most significant investment you can ever make in your life.

Blessed is the one
   who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
   or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the LORD,
   and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
   which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
   whatever they do prospers.
(Psalm 1:1-3)

It’s hard not to get twisted around when it comes to money. Is it wrong for me to earn a big salary? Should I try to get a lower-paying job? Have we spent too much money on a house? Should we drive a smaller car? If my husband already makes enough money for us to live on, is it wrong for me to work as well? How much should we give away? To whom? Is it wrong to want more money? Am I being less spiritual if I care about making the most profit I can? Should we sell everything and go live among the poor? Is it wrong to want my children to go to a private school?

Towards the end of the Book of Proverbs we find a prayer that is perhaps useful to consider as we sift through the many different questions we have concerning wealth and poverty:

“Two things I ask of you, LORD;
do not refuse me before I die:
Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.’
(Proverbs 30:7-9)

At the very heart of this prayer is a request for help in finding a place of moderation. Instead of praying for and pursuing the accumulation of wealth, we should be happy to find a place of balance where we are neither rich nor poor. Rather than worrying about growing our net worth, we should be far more focused on being thankful for our daily bread.

Note, however, that the reasoning here has little to do with wealth itself. The problem has nothing to do with owning or not owning a nice car. The deeper issue is wrapped up in our hearts. Having too much money may lead us away from God, and if we’re not careful, we may eventually find ourselves supplanting God as the Lord of our lives.

Similarly, having too little money may cause us to lie, cheat or even steal our way out. Continued poverty without relief may also lead us away from God, as we decide that we can only rely on ourselves, and we must get ahead by any means necessary.

So many of our questions about the wise handling of money come down to this issue—who is at the center of our lives? In whom do we place our trust? The Book of Proverbs opens with the claim that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7). Will we let our own “fear of the Lord” guide the way we handle our money this year?