“And we must fix our eyes on the last picture our Lord every gave us…the all deserving King, knelt around those dirty feet, gladly, willingly denying Himself.”
It’s amazing how much motherhood is teaching me about one of the hardest concepts in Scripture…
“If any man would come after me, let him DENY himself, take up his cross (daily), and follow me.”
It’s just like Jesus to ask us to do something He knows we can’t do! And why? Because that leaves us completely dependent upon HIS strength and grace to walk in obedience. And that’s tricky; He requires obedience (my will) to the things He asks of me (His will), but it’s an obedience that can only be carried out through the strength He can give me.
And what if I don’t deny myself? What happens to me, my family, my church, community, neighborhood, world?
Look around and you will see. It takes the most tenuous of people to maintain his proper spiritual bearings among the bombardment of messages we receive each day.
As we might say in the south, “Cause honey, they ain’t tellin‘ you to deny yourself!”
Motherhood is a crash course of self-denial. And it’s hard. And this is what hit me as I thought about these things today.
The common notion (spoken or unspoken) that children are a burden, stems from nothing much other than, “children interfere with MY agenda”.
And my agenda may be nothing more than wishing it to be quiet around the house. My agenda may involve the wish to indulge myself half a day in a book; to go shopping on a whim; to focus on my career; to be able to vacation more easily or more frequently; to drive a nicer car…it could go on and on. If we were honest, we would have to admit that children largely infringe upon MY wishes.
And before we get too busy noticing how everyone else has fallen into this trap, we need to examine ourselves.
I’m guilty. I love motherhood, love my children, love, love, LOVE my job raising up an army of God. But in the daily grind…how often does my agenda not so gently embrace my children and their needs? Or my husband’s needs?
I can always tell when my priorities are getting confused. If I’m snappy with the children, I’ve noticed that it’s usually when I’m in the middle of something I want to do. And they’re “bothering” me.
Or there is an argument to handle…(please tell me someone else has ever said this!) and instead of dealing with the heart issues involved and really patiently, calmly training them to love, I say something ridiculous like Bill Cosby would say, “I don’t want anybody to ever touch anybody else in the house again for as long as you live here!”
We want a quick fix–even we who understand the tedious labor required in training our children and nurturing their little souls.
There are no quick fixes though! If there were, we could hurry and get back to indulging ourselves…and that’s counter productive to the business of denying ourselves.
We must keep laying down those things that we think we deserve. We must stop our ears to the the messages around us. And we must fix our eyes on the last picture our Lord every gave us…the all deserving King, knelt around those dirty feet, gladly, willingly denying Himself.
“He would save his life must lose it.”
