Getting My Boots Dirty

We recently had our half night of prayer. So some of us were setting up, and it was raining.

William immediately put the boys to work carrying the heavies in the rain. It had been raining for a while, and some of the ground was muddy.

It took about 2 minutes before several of us girls started to feel like slackers, so we went over to help.

So the boys started passing over some of the lighter stuff so that we didn't get our shoes too wrecked or slip in the mud. But some of the girls wouldn't get close enough for the boys to actually hand them anything.

I thought that was a bit ridiculous, so I stomped through the mud to get the different things that needed to be carried. The second I did so, several of the girls and a few of the boys were horrified: "You'll wreck your boots!"

"So?" I pointed out that they were cheap, and had lasted me for three years already, so it didn't really matter that much. I would rather help.

The next day I was wondering about why I was so annoyed about it - about people wanting to stop me because they wanted to keep my shoes nice. I mean sure, priorities people, but that didn't explain why I was so annoyed.

It's because their attitude was that you get to choose where you are going to help.

And that's an attitude I work really hard to get rid of in my own life and in the lives of the children I teach.

If you are helping, you are doing what is necessary. And sometimes, the thing that is necessary is something you really don't want to do. But you do it anyway, because it's what is needed.

Especially in our service to God we need to be really wary of this view. We do NOT get to choose what we are going to do. God commands, and we need to obey. Even small examples of us "choosing" when choosing really means disobeying make it more acceptable in our eyes to choose where we will be obedient. That's DISOBEDIENCE! And it's not acceptable in God's eyes.

Sure, this was such a tiny thing that it really didn't matter in the scheme of things, and the others were saying it to be nice etc, but even small cases of givign in to our flesh lead to bigger and bigger examples of weakness, disobedience, and sin.

(Oh, and incidentally, my boots were just fine.)