I have a love-hate relationship with the inanimate objects in my life. It’s not something new, but an experience that has been with me a long, long time. I suppose it has something to do with the fact that I am inordinately clumsy. As a child, this clumsiness resulted in numerous trips to the emergency room. Good thing it was a long time ago; emergency room personnel take a dim view of accident prone children these days.
Some of it may also come from my expectations. I expect things to last forever. A 70-year-old mixer should still work, right? (In truth, my Hamilton Beach Model G still does). Another contributing factor is a poor sense of spatial relationships. I do not do well at Tetris. But how does all this manifest in my daily life? For example, I washed dishes and put my favorite butter dish in the dish drainer. Ten minutes later, from the living room, I hear a crash. The cover for the butter dish has slipped out of the dish drainer and crashed into the sink, shattering. Or typing on my laptop. I stand up to take a break and somehow my foot has become entangled in the power cord and the computer flops to the floor. Or taking the greatest pains to eat a juicy BLT neatly, I still end up with a grease stain on my brand new shirt. Or take this morning. I was doing some mending and attempting to thread the needle…with a needle threader, no less. (Oh for the days when that was a simple task!) Somehow the needle flies from my fingers into the carpet. Fortunately, I had a magnet handy for just that contingency so I could use it, instead of my bare foot, to find the needle.
Then there was this evening. I took some meat out of the freezer to defrost for Sunday dinner. Now perhaps, your freezer is well organized with everything neatly stacked. Mine isn’t. So I dig around, find the meat, remove it, and close the freezer door. Rather, I attempt to close the freezer door. Hmm. What exactly is protruding so far as to interfere with the proper door closure. I rearrange the contents. No go. I start removing the contents. Now the door must surely close, since there is nothing to stick out, right? Nope. I remove more items. Still no go. Now I’m beginning to worry. Yes, the refrigerator was purchased in 1992, but it still hums along. (Well, really it roars – sounds like a jet engine when it fires up – but it has done that since day one) I cannot afford a new refrigerator. Plus there’s the food. Fortunately, if needs be, I can transfer everything to my brother Mike’s refrigerator and freezers next door. So I begin to pray. Yes, I know, I should have done that first.
Thoroughly frustrated after struggling with a recalcitrant inanimate object for fifteen minutes, I grab my kitchen stool and sit in order to ponder the situation. And then I see it. A bulldog clip which had been used to close a partially used bag of veggies has jammed itself on the underside of the freezer door. Remove the clip, close the door. Problem solved. I put everything back into the freezer and turn to preparing my supper. And then it hits me. I had to go lower to see the solution.
I had to go lower to see it.
Suddenly, it was no longer about a stubborn freezer door. I had to go lower to see it. It is a life principle. It’s a life principle most of us do not like. Yet the gospels and epistles are filled with the concept. Jesus said of the Pharisees that they were highly esteemed by men but an abomination before God. He also said that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. To reiterate the principle, the Apostle Paul reminds us to not think more highly of ourselves than we ought.
We have to go lower to see it. The truth of the Gospel. The ordering of the kingdom of God. How often do we go about our daily routines thinking everything is just fine. We can handle everything that comes our way, no help needed. But then. But then, illness comes, an accident, financial disaster, the loss of a loved one. Suddenly we are knocked from our high perch, and like Saul of Tarsus, thrown from his horse, we look up and say, “Who are You, Lord? Why have You done this to me?” From our new perspective, flat on our backs, we can finally see it. What is it? Perhaps it’s the path we’re on, taking us farther away from God. Perhaps it is a relationship that is in danger because of our preoccupation. Perhaps it’s just our own independent nature persuading us we are doing just fine on our own. Whatever the “it” is, we have needed to go lower to see what is wrong, what the obstacle to our walk with Jesus is.
As it is with us as individuals, so also it may very well be with us as a country. America! The biggest! The best! The culmination of the advance of history! Perhaps as a nation, we also must go lower to see it. There’s a verse from the Old Testament that Christians like to quote. It says, “If My people will humbly pray, and repent from their wicked ways, I will hear them from Heaven and heal their land.” It does not just say, “If My people pray.” It says, “If My people will humbly pray.” And what is humility but to go lower? And then, what is seen from that humble perspective? Our wicked ways. Not the wicked ways of nonbelievers. Our wicked ways – and the desperate need to repent of them.
We must go lower to see it. It’s a life principle in the kingdom of God. Like it or not, we will, as individuals, as a church, as a nation, find ourselves in that lowly position some day. How much better to choose to take it than to be knocked off our high horse!
Kathy Kexel 