2 Much Too Busy

  I once worked for a generous boss who gifted me and the kids with free seats to Mariners games at the Kingdome - one row in front of the Mariners’ wives and girlfriends.  Most of these gals were drop dead gorgeous - It was like sitting on a clothed set of Baywatch.  (Interesting Sidenote Gleaned from Overheard Conversations:  Even if our husbands received Two Point Five Million Dollar signing bonuses, our conversations may not be full of grace and contentment).   As much as beautiful women fascinate me, it was easy to come home crabby from those games because there is an undercurrent in femininity that causes us to compare ourselves.  Despite studying women like Esther in the Bible and knowing beauty and good genes are simply another tool God can use for His glory, at times I wonder why He wasn’t a little more generous when He had my DNA on the workbench.  Like it be any skin off His nose.

We could write multiple blogs on the evils of comparing ourselves, but for purposes of 2 Much Too Busy, this comparing takes a hybrid route.  Like Little Red Riding Hood straying off the Path of Righteousness, we veer into the Forest of Discontent when we compare serving and giftings in the Church.  This big bad wolf devours our peace and we swing from pride to depression.

God builds us uniquely and individually with capabilities, giftings and life experiences.  Paul tells us in Hebrews 12:2 to ”fix our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfector of our faith.”  I need constant reminders to do this, not veer off into what God is doing in my sisters’ lanes and comparing.  Even when we start accepting our imperfections and how God created us on the outside, this comparing takes a sophisticated twist as satan begins weaving discontent on our beauties from the inside.  Know what happens when a runner gazes too long in the next lane?  Trip.  Stumble. Crash.

Several years ago, a beloved friend called me in despair.  Her sister had been battling cancer, and she was starting to really freak out.  Knowing that I had lost several close family members, she was calling for advice.  

One of her toughest issues was that as the cancer took over, her sister obviously didn’t look the same, and she didn’t want her kids to see her that way, and was reluctant to let them visit.  The Holy Spirit did dress me in 1 Corinthians 1:4 conversation (”Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received in God“), but over time our conversations also catupulted me into a cauldron of judgment, anger and discontent as I compared my life with hers.  Underneath our conversation, I was beginning to have a new conversation with myself.

Was she serious?!  What the heck, should I let the kids visit?  In God’s Providence, my kids had to wake up in the same house and watch my brother slowly die every day for 2 years!  It was hardly pretty or conventional, spending toddlerhood in hospitals and the PolyClinic.  Goodness gracious, quit sheltering them, I thought.  What an extraordinary opportunity to teach them empathy and compassion, and that people are what matter in life!  One visit wasn’t going to kill them!  It wasn’t even ABOUT them!  Life is messy, bad things happen under the Curse -  Grow up!  TEACH YOUR CHILDREN TO SUFFER WELL! is what I wanted to scream on the other end. 

What kept me from verbalizing my poison was the Holy Spirit and the fact that she was my friend, and I loved her, and underneath her hysteria and frailty, I recognized an honest soul attempting to reconcile death and heaven for the first time apart from Biblical head knowledge.  She had never before been given the opportunity in life to grapple this out.  I, on the other hand, had dealt with death from an early age.

I took out my suffering ruler and began measuring.  Lost my father and a brother in childhood.  Lost another brother in adulthood to a freakish accident.  And most recently another brother to a terminal illness.  All of the pain and heartache I had stuffed boiled to the surface as I began comparing my list of bereavement experiences with hers, and I thought THIS REALLY SUCKS HOW COMPLETELY UNFAIR GOD HAS BEEN.  NO WONDER I’VE HAD ISSUES WITH MEN WHEN GOD TOOK ALL THE GOOD ONES OUT.

I spent some time as young woman wrestling all the implications out.  Shelly versus God, sovereignty and Providence.  Was He good, or not?  Then how come I had to endure all of that pain & loss?  How come other people didn’t have the same heartaches?  Wasn’t it just the least bit unfair to take all these men and their influence out?  Shouldn’t my Christian home have provided some insurance?  I resented this bereavement ministry.  In fact, I resented almost everyone at Church now with their happy clappy little perfect families.

During my time wandering in the Forest of Discontent, I stumbled across this root passage in Luke 18, starting at verse 9:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable:

“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men-robbers, evilddoers, adulterers-or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

But the tax collector stood at a distance.  He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.  For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Among the theological implications, this passage spotlighted my sinful attitude.  What hit me was this:  I was the Pharisee, looking smugly down at others and their losses and frailties, while I, the Pharisitical bereavement heavyweight, had endured so much more. 

This cut like a knife (see Hebrews 4:12).  How incredibly ungrateful to take the unique life experiences God had given me and use them to be smug, resentful and pious.  Instead, my posture should be one of humility, thanking God for His mercies in all of it, and trusting Him that this would somehow all work out to be beauty and grace in my life, and that of my children.

“But alas, so far from appreciating the gracious designs of the Refiner, how often we are petulant, and murmur when He empties us from vessel to vessel…“  A.W. Pink.

God never intended for us to compare life and giftings with each other in the Church.  This cultivates sinful swings from pride to depression. 

As Pastor Steve exorted us yesterday regarding suffering and any life experience:  ”There is purpose in all of it.  There’s purpose in what we experience and walk through.  You can trust that.”

Comparing life experiences and judging each other from our warped views is wrong.  God is either the who He says He is as revealed in Scripture and worthy of our trust, or He’s a cosmic jerk not worthy of worship. 

God will use every unique experience in our life for His glory.  Some of the fruit from my losses I’m just seeing now, twenty years later. 

Some of us have weathered inordinate internal pressure.  Some of us have weathered inordinate external pressure.  Some may not have much go wrong this side of heaven, at least from what we can tell.  Some will always look like they’re gaining, and some will always look like they’re not.  Some have public gifts, some private.  Some will look irresponsibly 2 Much Too Busy all the time, and some will look unhelpful and unwilling to serve.  Some will look like they have a perfect family, and some will look like the wheels fell off every Sunday.  Unless they are in your community and you have opportunity to get into their kitchen, as it were, fix your eyes on Jesus, and stay there.  We’re never entirely privy to what God is doing, even in our own life.  Jesus is the only One who understands the intricacies of 2 Much Too Busy, and we can trust He’s busy all the time:  Busy being faithful, busy being loving, busy disciplining, busy working all things out for our good, busy getting us ready for heaven.