Can a person study their whole lives and learn the "how to's" but never actually know "how to" actually apply it? Countless Bible Studies I've done. Thousands of sermon notes I've taken. What good has any of it done if in one INSTANT I'm so capable of losing it? That kind of action, or better word: REACTION shows no sign of a trained student of the Word. If in one moment you can UNDO what you've spent so much time trying to DO in the first place then isn't something really wrong?
This concept of undoing something or screwing up something can be applied to anything --- Art, Baking, Sewing, A 10 hour road trip, a Marriage, a game, a journal, a LIFE!
From something as small as a canvas. Say I spend hours with tiny, perfect precise pen strokes creating something pleasing to the eye..... a creation no doubt made with time and hard work. Then, I got tired or angry and took a broad-tip sharpie right across the entire picture. In an instant of laziness or anger or any number of things really, the hours of hard work prior to the split second of rage or whatever-ness, it truly was ruined.
Or to something as large as a marriage that had years of prayer, counseling, hard talks, good choices, etc... to come crumbling because of deciding in one instant to be done. This could be played out any number of ways (of which I won't even list.)
Or there's something in the middle like a road trip. Let's say you are in the van for 10 hours with your family. You work really hard for 9 hours and 55 minutes. You speak kindly. You serve. You sacrifice. You are creative and play games and make it fun. Got the picture? In the last 5 minutes, something triggers your anger and frustration and you drop the "F" bomb within ear shot of your children. What's remembered from that road trip 10 years later?
It just seems way too easy to UNDO everything you work so hard towards. For years I've taken notes and done the studies - but what good are all those pages of time spent writing all that stuff if your efforts are squashed the moment you do whatever action you do that destroys your work?
Why follow a recipe and put all those ingredients in if you can waste and ruin them all when the rat poison spills in causing you to have to throw it all away?
DISCLAIMER!!!!!! None of these events actually happened. I have just thought them up as I realized how quickly something could be ruined. All of this was brewing in my head on a 10 hour road trip :)
7 comments:
I hear you Rachel. You've got to repent. We will have to keep on repenting until the day we die. Whatever we "undo" God can "undo" and even use it for His glory if we just repent. Here is one of my recent memory verses...
Did God give you His Spirit and work miracles among you because you observed the law, or because you believe what you heard!
Gal.3:5
Amen, sister!!! I know exactly what you are talking about. And to quote the great Dr. Phil..."it takes 10,000 'atta boys' to make up for one instant of screaming (or something like that)" I so get it. Especially with my kids. I can do my morning devotion and be feeling all great and then "boom" - I'm yelling at the kids for something stupid.
Are you talking about a hypothetical van trip or a memory?? Just wondering?? :+}
Good thing we can never undo grace, no matter how hard we try. It's comforting to know that for all my screw-ups, God still loves me and calls me His. NOTHING erases that. Praying for you.
After these four comments.... I had to go back and insert the DISCLAIMER that NONE of these events have actually happened..... It seriously just has me stumped that something can get ruined so quickly! That's all :)
FYI too Rachel, I didn't mean that just YOU needed to repent over what you described, I just meant WE need to be about the business of repentence, I should have made the WE part more clear! God has been teaching me that so much lately!
Oh, my! This is sooo good. So many times I have wished that once, JUST ONCE I could get a little credit for 10 years of service in an unhappy marriage...instead of the 100% blame I get for screwing it up. I am NOT excusing my sins, but I just feel the pain of sketching that beautiful art only to bring out the sharpie all too often. I do it with my kids, too. Meaningful family time, talking about the things of the Lord last night, a peaceful morning and then a kid does something stupid on the way out the door and I huff and puff and lecture all the way to church... THANK GOD FOR FORGIVENESS AND GRACE.
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