Saturday, August 29, 2015

Bring Us Your Righteous Bedtime, O Lord

Sometimes I'm genuinely walking in my "Best Self" shoes. Some days, not so much.

Tonight I was wrestling a cranky toddler--hell bent on squeezing 5 more minutes out of his already-late bedtime--into pull ups. He wailed and flailed. He was determined not to go to bed, even if that meant sitting on the potty for fake attempts at poop... but the gig was up. And so was my patience.
Somewhere under my breath I was muttering, "Would you just shut the fluff up and get your stupid butt in these pants before I lose my mind?!"

Just because God has a sense of humor, this verse popped into my mind out of nowhere: "Man's anger does not bring about the righteousness of God." 
O ho ho! I see what you just did there Holy Spirit. 

I mentally flipped my pony tail and thought-retorted, "Dear God, I'm not trying to bring about your righteousness right now. I'm trying to bring about BEDTIME." 

Oooh, recalcitrant child. God should put me to bed early for my sassy mouth. (I'm not the only one who Thought-Retorts at God, am I?... 'Cause that would be awkward.)

Today I was reading through the Gospels searching for Jesus' emotional responses to situations. Almost every time he responds to individuals, crowds, situations and even cities on the horizon, the emotion is "Compassion" or "Pity"... or he just flat out bursts into tears. Jesus was no stoic. He had all the feels. 

But I had another little Thought Retort brewing in the back of my mind: "Would Jesus be all, 'Let the little children come to me!' if he had to be a stay at home dad?!" 

The answer was in front of me. For years he was followed around by thousands of people. Constantly asked for help. Constantly being touched. Constantly listening to complaints and tears and tales of brokenness. Constantly looking at the world through double-vision eyes that could see both the physical hurting and the spiritual brokenness of his beloved children even while they stamped their feet and asked for more, more, more. When he wasn't touching people, healing booboos, cradling children, he was being pestered by cranky religious intellectuals asking, "Whyyyyyyyy?? Whhhhyyyy Jeeeeesuuus?" 

Oh, gosh. 
This is starting to sound like... wait... could it be... mom life?!?! 

In a way, Jesus really did live Mom Life. BUT.... he never lost his compassion. When he got off a boat and there were 5000 people waiting for him, he didn't mumbled, "Aw give it a rest! For the love!" He instantly experienced such a deep moving of the heart that his disciples had to literally invent a new word in Greek for it.

Charles Spurgeon tells us that, "The original word is a very remarkable one. It is not found in classic Greek. It is not found in the Septuagint. The fact is, it was a word coined by the evangelists themselves. They did not find one in the whole Greek language that suited their purpose, and therefore they had to make one. It is expressive of the deepest emotion; a striving of the bowels—a yearning of the innermost nature with pity." 

HOW?! Good guacamole!! How in the name of biscuit mix?! With all that pressure, all that total all consuming need... I buckle under the all-consuming need of two humans. Let alone 5000. Let alone ALL the humans on the planet.

I don't know kids. I don't know. But I'm inspired. I'm inspired to take pause when the crazy is hitting the fan... take a beat... and dig a little deeper for the eyes that see my own children like He sees me. 

Did I succeed at this today?  Most definitely NOT AT ALL. Praise God there's bedtime, and there's always tomorrow.

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