It started with hearing little feet pattering around prematurely. If the sun isn't up, why are they? I always get ready for dealing with a cranky person when that happens, well, 2 cranky people including myself! Then I tried to turn the stinkin' light on in the living room and the chain was over extended, and wouldn't turn the light on. The floor was littered with the stuff of life and folks weren't fired up about chili for breakfast. "Durn it Mike! Would you please fix that chain? I shouldn't have to pull a kitchen chair in here everytime I want to turn the light on! It's making me crazy." His response irritates me further, "Ali, it's not broken. It just doesn't work properly." Hmmm. Really? It just doesn't work properly? "Yeah, Mike, another word for that is...BROKEN!!!" He continues to argue (which is rather unlike him) that the light isn't broken, it simply malfunctions from time to time. "Call it what you want, Babe, it's broken to me and it's making me nuts."
It was then time to sit down to breakfast (y'all know we eat "dinner" food in the morning which is why it was chili) and read the Bible and pray for our kids and show them what it's like to put Jesus first and I just wanted to go back to bed. I bowed to pray, mostly because I wanted to get on with the torture of making people eat that which they do not, and said, "Lord, I say I'm frustrated, but what I really am is broken. Please help us, heal us...fix us I pray that we wouldn't make up excuses masking what is really wrong. Please. Amen."
We make excuses for practically everything. If my kids are cranky they are "tired" if they are snatchy they are "struggling with sharing" if they are lippy they are "trying to communicate" when really all of us are broken. Now, nothing is ever a perfect analogy...on our own we are a broken mess. I do have Christ's righteousness rather than my sin when it comes down to it, but in this world, in this life, before glory...I malfunction from time to time. I get angry and say things like, "What is wrong with your English that when I say, 'Get into the van' you 3 stand around chatting on the porch?" I say it loud and ugly and then look around to see if any of my neighbors heard me. I choose to check e-mail rather than read a book to the children begging for my attention. I get frustrated when lights malfunction and when children are "tired" and when my husband is late. We can call it whatever fancy word we can think of. We can make up excuses until we are blue in the face, but this world got a crack in it when the father of lies whispered seductively into the ears of our first parents, that "God didn't really say that."
He's working though. All of creation knows that it's coming. The reckoning. The day when it's all set right for good and forever and there are no more malfunctions. No more "Will you forgive me?" No more guilty consciences and shame. We have the hope now. We hope for that day. We have peace from God for sure. I know that I have been justified by grace through faith and that I will stand before a Holy God and not be consumed because of the work that Jesus did in His life and on that cross. I do, however, live in a world that is broken. I'm going to call it what it is and then look to my Savior to help me get from here to there with joy!
P.S.
The picture is somewhat unrelated, we wanted our family in PA to see Anson and Mike at the game. But, these are the best broken boys I've got!!!
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