I love my boys. I thank God everyday for blessing me with such good children. There is one thing that I believe all children go through. It is a sense of bewilderment when given a series of jobs.
For instance; my children and I can be cleaning up the yard. I can tell Benjamin to go and pick up around the shed. Benjamin is for the most part a trustworthy young man. I don’t have to tell him no more than three times to get this done. After the fourth time, he finally gets around to doing this task. Meanwhile I am working diligently on the other fifteen areas of the yard that need to be cleaned up. If I’m not careful, I’ll soon be working by myself because in Benjamin’s mind, he is through when the area around the shed is cleaned up. It doesn’t matter that the other fifteen areas look like Dorothy’s house in Kansas after the tornado swept through – get done with the yard around the shed, I’m done!
What Benjamin needs is a ever so gentle reminder that there is a big picture here to be taken in. He has to be reminded that there are other parts of the yard that haven’t even been touched yet. Sure enough, after he gets done with the yard around the front porch, he’s off to play basketball. I do love my boys, I really do!
We come to church on Sunday and we don’t bother to see the other parts of ministry that haven’t been touched. We don’t see the trash that has been laying around the church yard for the past four weeks, the jug of oil by the door, the blinds that have fallen apart and haven’t been replaced, the meetings that haven’t taken place, the families that haven’t been fed, and most of all, the lost souls that are still on a pathway where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. All because we don’t get the big picture. We find it so easy to do other things that seem more important at the time. We think – awe, I’ll have plenty of time to get around to that or the preacher can do that, that’s what he gets paid to do anyway, or someone else will probably do that. Guess what – it ain’t getting done!!