Nothing to eat, nothing to wear

When our four daughters were younger and all at home, I would often find them – particularly after cross country practice – standing in the glow of the opened refrigerator, cooling down the entire house with its chill, looking completely dumbfounded.  “What are you looking for?” I would inquire.  They would stare a bit longer into the cavern, and reply more often than not, “There’s nothing to eat.”

And on school mornings, particularly when the three oldest all traveled through the early darkness to high school in Cincinnati, two would be inevitably and impatiently waiting on a particular sister – the one with the fullest closet.  “Car leaving!” our oldest would call up from the kitchen.  And her sister would respond, “I have nothing to wear.”

In both scenarios, they were paralyzed into inaction by how much lay before them.

I felt that way in the middle of the darkness the other night, when my mind was traveling faster than the speed limit without headlights, and my body simultaneously crying “Just. Go. To. Sleep.”  I took apart the day I had just traveled through, every decision, every conversation, what I had done, and as we reply in our church’s corporate confession of sin:  “the things left undone.”  Those incomplete things are what keep my thoughts pacing the imaginary hallways of the night.

I had managed once again to waste a perfectly good day.  I knew I needed to get some writing done.  But it was obvious what I was avoiding when I started to clean the baseboards.  Our house is never cleaner than when a writing project is on the day's agenda.

It appeared I accomplished a lot, just not what God intended. My day was stuffed with nothing to wear, turning away from the fridge still hungry as if it were empty.

Has the LORD as great delight

in burnt offerings and sacrifices

        as in obeying the voice of the LORD?

Behold, to obey

                      is better than sacrifice.

                                      1 Samuel 15. 22

It is not too different than when I would ask our youngest daughter to clean her room.  I would re-enter the mess an hour later, and find her rearranging her bookcase alphabetically by genre, the bed unmade, clothes hanging like prayer flags around the room.  Her older sister once even went to the extent of creating a card catalog for her books, while completely oblivious to a week’s history of elementary fashion.  Remarkable achievements, indeed, but not paying attention to what was asked of them.

What is needful is simply responding to Him.  It is what the Bible calls "heeding His voice," "following," "abiding," or "obeying." Not focusing on how much I can cram into the day, not “look at all the really good stuff I have done,” and then wonder why there are still gaping holes that keep me awake at night.  I am the one who abandoned His divine design for the day on the side of the road..

Help me not just to see the needs, O LORD,

help me to not just hear Your voice, 

              but help me to respond to You.

We have all

“...been appointed duties in His service.”

                1 Chronicles 24. 3

Am I doing what

      God has designed and appointed me today?

Nothing is random

      or insignificant in His name,

                                     for His kingdom,

                                     for His glory,

even in what may appear irrelevant,

ridiculous,

           a waste of time and energy,

      or a slowness in its ripening.

"You want me to do what?"

Even in this,

He beckons me,

              "Follow Me deeper."

One act of responding to God

   leads me to the next step

                         in following Him,

sometimes to remain in the familiar,

sometimes in the unexpected,

but always journeying into the profoundly eternal,

and even in what

            I can't yet see from here.