The Right Match

A fish is a sweet animal because it can breath underwater. Fresh green grass is beautiful and on a sunny day it doesn't get much better than taking a nap in it under a tree. Put that awesome fish with that fine grass and you'll get a dead fish in the grass. Also, an embarrassing clean-up process.

We know this rule: the combination of two things need complimentary characteristics that makes them work well together. Opposites attract. She's outgoing and he's shy. That fish has gills and fins that work perfectly when underwater and not that well on the grass (believe me, I tried it once when I was little and my dad got really mad at me and I spent that night in my room, grounded because he just paid for that fish and that's his money that he works so da -- just don't do it).

When my brother and I were little, my dad would make Mac 'n' Cheese. My brother loves Mac and loves cheese, but would never touch Mac 'n' Cheese. Why? He didn't think they went together well (I know, and he's in therapy so we're happy).

Nature tells us that often times we are most free when we are set up under certain restrictions of a complimentary match - when we have found a mate or a habitat we can best exist with. But what we end up doing with our lives is parceling ourselves out to everything we find awesome. We put a little bit of ourselves with a girl, a little bit of ourselves to our family, and most of ourselves to school or a job. We even split our time living in one place and buying another house that we can relax in.

Instead of finding our whole self in one place, we take pieces of ourselves and dish it out to a ton of different things we think are good. And they are good, but is it the right match?

Christians are really good at messing with this. How often do you hear someone list out their priorities as "God first, family second, and ministry/work third"? I hear it all the time. We have our "God time" in the morning so we can have "work time" during the day and then "family time" at night (except when a good game is on, then you have "me time").

Did Jesus do this? Did he have neatly blocked time frames to "be with God" and then "do ministry" and then "hang with his homies." Not at all. In fact, there are multiple times where Jesus is trying to get to a secluded place to rest and people bother him. He doesn't say, "excuse me, but you're interrupting my quiet time." No, he serves them.

And why?

Because you live one life and you are one person. God is not a device that you turn on and off and neither is your family. Every decision you make is a spiritual decision and every word you say is a spiritual word.

God is our perfect match, but only when our whole life is given to Him and defined by Him. Giving one day a week to God is not what the Scriptures have told us, giving our very lives to God is exactly what the Scriptures have told us. Placing all of who you are under the freeing restriction of God changes not necessarily what you do, but how you go about doing everything.

Us with God. That is how life is supposed to work. The difficult thing is realizing that the "us" part is more complex than you might think and the "with" part is more dangerous than we would like.