Impatience and a 40 MPH Speed Limit

I guess you’d say I’m an impatient person. Sometimes I yell at the microwave: Come on! One minute – are you KIDDING me!

I realize this is not one of my finer qualities. I like to excuse myself by saying, well, I just want to get things done. I don’t have time to dawdle. (How annoying is that, with the undercurrent of ugly pride? Okay, you got me.)

Anyhow I’m trying. I know patience is not only a virtue but a fruit of the Holy Spirit’s ministry in me. Although some of the spiritual fruit seem to be developing awfully slowly. (Come ON! Oh, oops…)

The Broken Plant, Revisited

A few months ago I told you the tale of The Broken Plant,  which you can read again with much hilarity by clicking here.

Or I could summarize, with less hilarity: I sat on one of my wife's house plants and broke off a main stem. Since my wife inexplicably likes these things, sitting on one of them was not the smartest thing I have ever done. To be honest, it joins a very long list of "probably not the smartest things" I have been compiling over the course of our marriage. So I suppose she should be used to random acts of plant-breakage.

But I immediately took the coward's way out and stuck the broken branch back into the dirt. My granddaughter, who witnessed my horticultural mayhem, counseled me to come clean and tell Nana. "Just say you're sorry." This proved to be great advice. As King David said, "when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long." Of course he had committed adultery and murder, and all I had done was murder (so I thought) a peace lily. 

But the principle is the same. Fess up, throw yourself on the mercy of the court, tell your wife you busted a cap in her plant, so to speak. And I did, and Dionne wasn't mad at me. 

Actually she started watering my hastily buried branch, and now, five months later, the whole plant is doing great. Go figure. This picture, which I took with my dumbphone, shows the actual plant, with the actual branch, growing like a weed. Or a peace lily. (I added the arrow. We don't really have a literal red arrow floating above our hearth.)

Anyhow, I'm sure there are lessons to be learned here. For example, my wife did an internet search for "peace lily," and found out this plant has, and I quote,"resiliency and a forgiving nature." No kidding.

But, no, I mean spiritual type lessons. So here are three:

1. Don’t trust your instinct to cover up brokenness. Truth and humility are always a better way to go.

2. Listen to little kids, especially your grandchildren. They can be pretty smart.

3. Maybe what you think is irreparable might not be. If Christ can forgive people like you and me, busted plants can grow again. And who knows what else He might fix?

How to Confess Your Sins

When it comes to confession, your heart is more important than your words, of course. But I was touched by this prayer, written in private devotions over 400 years ago.

By Thy sweat bloody and clotted! Thy soul in agony,

Thy head crowned with thorns, bruised with staves,

Thine eyes a fountain of tears,

Thine ears full of insults,

Thy mouth moistened with vinegar and gall,

Thy face stained with spitting,

Thy neck bowed down with the burden of the Cross,

Thy back ploughed with the wheals and wounds of the scourge,

Thy pierced hands and feet,

Thy strong cry, Eli, Eli,

Thy heart pierced with the spear,

The water and blood thence flowing,

Thy body broken, Thy blood poured out —

Lord forgive the iniquity of Thy servant

And cover all his sin.

The author, the English Bishop Lancelot Andrewes (yes, that’s how you spell it), has a tender heart toward the extraordinary suffering of our Savior. God’s love and justice come together in the cross of Christ. It's always good, when we confess our sins, to remember the price Jesus paid to atone for them.

By the way, Bishop Andrewes oversaw the Bible translation we now call the King James Bible.

The Broken Plant

A couple nights ago I got to babysit our two grandchildren. My wife had to leave for part of the evening (how convenient!) so I had the two kids all to myself. My granddaughter is four and a half, and my grandson is a year and a half. And I was born during the Harding administration.

I got ready by chugging a five-hour energy drink and strapping on body armor. Just kidding.

Actually I got ready by childproofing our living room a little bit. I moved the big matches on the fireplace from the hearth to the mantle, put away a container of pens and pencils, and stored my wife’s cross-stitch project in the closet.

                                                                                                          

Then I dragged the coffee table out of the way, and slid the big leather chair in front of the loveseat. That way we could hurl ourselves from one to the other without being impaled on the corner of the table. And by “we” I mean, of course, the grandkids. I didn’t actually hurl myself, though I did lurch, stumble, and wobble a couple times.

We had a great time. We watched Thomas the Train on Netflix and sang the songs together. We all made loud, crazy noises and ran laps around the furniture. We played tag, with me holding my grandson on my shoulders while my granddaughter easily outran us. We dropped tennis balls in the dog’s water dish. Then we got our own water to drink and also to pour onto the loveseat. We hid under our blankees and snuck up on one another. It was pretty fun.