Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns
If you think Jesus would have come into your home that day and not issued a strong rebuke to the head of household, you are mistaken. These words of condemnation have been haunting me for days now. They aren’t all that different than the soundtrack I play in my head on an almost-daily basis. It’s…
I am nesting. On Saturday I emptied the refrigerator. Last summer’s homemade pickles in their jars. The bread ends that seem to multiply on every shelf. The eggs. The milk. The fruit and veggies. All of it sat on the floor or the counter as I carefully removed the shelves and wiped them down with…
I’ve heard that life is like a highway. And it definitely seems like that sometimes. The pace of life swirls around me at dizzying speeds. We’re all so busy. In such a hurry. Always somewhere to be, something else to do. I’m a get-to-the-point, get-there-quick kind of girl. I don’t like to waste time on…
A sticky, smelly goo pooled on the floor of the kitchen just underneath the stove.
“Has that been there long?” I asked my husband, somewhat rhetorically. He didn’t think so. We examined the goo, but because we were already running late for church, we ignored it till later.
“Is it getting worse?” I asked, later.
“Only one way to find out,” he said, wiping the goo from the floor.
Hours later, the goo was back. Thus began the search for the source of the goo. While I was in the living room putting our son to sleep, my husband, flashlight in hand, was in the kitchen trying to determine if the goo was oozing from underneath the stove or elsewhere.
Back in the living room with an upturned nose and a grimace on his face, he announced, “The potatoes.”
Ah, the potatoes. In an effort to find a dark place to keep them, off of the floor, out of reach of the toddler and baby, I had forgotten to take into account the warmth of our kitchen over multiple 90-degree days.
I realized that I had been smelling these rotten potatoes for a few days now, but given that not all of the dishes in the kitchen are clean, I thought I was smelling the griddle on which we had recently cooked salmon burgers. Even after the griddle was clean, I couldn’t pinpoint the smell, nor did I try to discover its source.
I offered to clean the mess up.
“It’s really gross,” my husband said. He bagged the potatoes and took them straight to the garbage. (Praise the Lord for the discovery of bad potatoes on garbage night!) I never saw the potatoes, only the residue they left.
The clean-up was gross, but nothing a little Fantastik with Oxy Clean and a Swiffer Wet Jet couldn’t handle.
I was a little annoyed at myself for not investigating the stench earlier. And I thought about how these bad potatoes are like the bad things in our lives. Attitudes, behaviors — sins, the Bible calls them — that we try to hide in the dark parts of our lives, hoping no one will discover them.
But eventually, we start to rot. And we stink, so to speak. And we ooze these hidden parts of our lives until we’re dripping with goo and can no longer hide the rottenness.
Maybe people turn up their noses at us, or hold us at arm’s length so as not to dirty themselves with us. Maybe they avoid us so they don’t have to come into contact with our stench.
And maybe there’s Someone willing to clean us up. To take out the trash and give us a good cleaning. And maybe He wants us to keep looking into the hidden parts of our lives to find more rotten stuff and get rid of it until we can’t find anymore rotten stuff.
Maybe His name is Jesus.
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink.”
My daughter showed me what this verse from Romans meant tonight. After a mini “Dora the Explorer” marathon, we went to wash dishes. 
And as we were washing dishes, she told me that Swiper needed a drink of water. And that he needed something to eat. And that he needed to go potty.
If you’re not familiar with “Dora,” as I wasn’t two weeks ago, Swiper is a fox, and he’s always trying to take things from Dora and her friends. (Say it with me, “Swiper, no swiping!”)
He seems to be the most memorable “Dora” character to Isabelle. She even wanted him to come brush his teeth with her as she got ready for bed tonight. I had to tell her that Swiper went home.
I don’t expect that a 2-year-old understands what “swiping” is or why it’s bad, but the lesson still resonated with me. She wanted to offer food and drink and shelter to a fox with a bad reputation. Me? I only wish I had that inclination.
Isabelle doesn’t know yet about enemies. She only has friends. I don’t have many known enemies. Last week in church, we talked about the “Who is my neighbor?” question asked as a lead-in to the parable of the Good Samaritan. I think it’s interesting that we don’t have to ask that question about our enemies. If God tells us to love our enemies, at least one face or name probably comes to mind.
I just finished reading Donald Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz.” (I know, I’m behind the curve for popular Christian literature.) So much of what he writes was stuff I should know but needed to hear in a new way, or stuff I think or do but am too afraid to admit. Anyway, he talked some about wanting Christian spirituality to rid his life of hate. And how he loved people who some Christians can’t imagine loving — liberals, homosexuals, hippies, Democrats.
Maybe it’s not always enemies we need to show kindness to, but people outside of our social, political and economic circles.