Slugging it Out
Lest you think that my life of following Jesus every day in the everyday is somehow floating blissfully over a verdant landscape flowing with milk and honey, it’s time for more full disclosure.
Sometimes, my relationship with God looks more like a slugfest.
On Sunday Pastor Adam gave up stepping on toes for meddlin’ as the saying goes. He suggested some idols that this current crisis may be exposing. An idol is anything we trust to provide for or give us significance, security or satisfaction. After the first one, I almost stopped listening…it was right on the money: productivity, finding significance in accomplishment.
We are at the end of the citrus season; our late-season oranges are actually worth eating this year and the lemon tree has seemed intent on world domination, until the last week or so, when every morning it left a thank offering of two dozen lemons on the lawn, so ripe that the mere suggestion that someone wanted a lemon resulted in bright ovoids plummeting from the upper branches. Dealing with the abundance has been a challenge, and this after giving away bushels to neighbors, friends and passers-by. A city councilman even stopped by to ask about getting some!
With food shortages, or at least supply chain crises, looming, I have been determined to steward our abundance, sending as little to the compost pile as possible. I have scoured cookbooks, recipe cards and websites for what to do with our amazing citrus harvest to preserve it for the coming days. I also have a vegetable patch, planted with onions, potatoes from my Montana son and his wife, and an assortment of other garden regulars. It seemed to be growing quite well, with the promise of an abundant harvest. I was especially proud of the potatoes….(cue slugfest) …seriously, slugs. Yick! Yuck! Blechk! Dozens of them. Nothing I did made any impact. One by one the potato plants were being stripped, gnawed, felled…I felt betrayed, abandoned, desperate, angry.
“Why won’t You let me have success in the vegetable garden?”
All of my previous plagues of various vermin have been aimed at something in my heart that was not well…this was no exception. A time of listening prayer with an honest friend, combined with Holy Spirit convictions through Adam’s sermon have led me to understand that the focus of my so-called stewardship activities was not grateful cooperation with God in His abundant provision, but an act of significance-seeking productivity worship. The kind that gets frantic when stuff doesn’t turn out quite right…the kind that brushes off offers of help when I’m exhausted because I have to do this myself…. Repentance, anyone?
I don’t know if the potatoes will survive, but my slugfest with God is over…at least for today. He wins, of course, but He graciously waits for me to hear Him offering me Himself instead of any other “god.”
Still following Jesus every day in the everyday,
Christi
P.S. We have canned orange segments, made marmalade, candied rinds, started extracts, begun citrus cleaning solution, planning on lemon powder, possibly lemon syrup….other ideas?
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