Category Archives: Submitting to God

If I had a hammer….

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My husband was not a handyman. When I married him, I thought being mechanically inclined came naturally to most men, and that he’d automatically be my Mr. Fix-it. But when I asked him to do manual labor of any kind, he always bristled. I couldn’t figure it out, but that didn’t stop me from asking or him from complying.

A new seat

One day I thought maybe I was asking beyond his expertise. If I could find a simple task, things would go better. When our old toilet seat cracked, I came home with a new one and asked him to put it on. Two bolts. How hard could it be?

An hour after he started, I returned to inspect (and hopefully praise) him but found him spreading all our bath towels on a flooding floor.

“What happened?” I said.

“I couldn’t get the bolts off the old toilet seat, so I tried to hammer them off. That’s when water started pouring out the bottom!”

Not being mechanical myself, I hadn’t noticed the bolts were old metal ones, rusted and stuck. I probably would have used a hammer, too. The bottom line was a cracked toilet bowl that had to be replaced.

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Hammer

Remembering this incident reminded me of something I heard last week about unnecessary use of a hammer: “If a hammer is the only tool you have, everything looks like a nail.”

Isn’t that sometimes true of the way we try to get the attention of certain people in our lives? Sometimes we’re so passionate about making our point we “hammer it home” with excessive force when force isn’t needed.

Jesus described himself as gentle (Matthew 11:29), which didn’t preclude him from using force in the rare situations that warranted it. But he taught us by his consistent example that the most powerful tool was usually to use gentleness. That makes sense, since disproportionate force closes people off and prevents them from even hearing us.

Concerning the toilet bowl incident, a better approach would have been for Nate and I to have had a gentle discussion early in our marriage exploring why he disliked mechanical tasks so much. It would have saved a good deal of unnecessary angst and offense. Thankfully, we finally did that, and I learned the simple answer to the problem: he’d never been taught to do the tasks I was asking him to do. He certainly gets credit for trying, though, and I wish I’d given him more of it.

Tools

Eventually God surprised us when he endowed several of our children with the natural mechanical abilities our family (and our house) needed. And they knew how to use all kinds of tools…. not just hammers.

Paul said, “What do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a rod of discipline, or shall I come in love and with a gentle spirit?” (1 Corinthians 4:21)

A Phobia?

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Last night after I’d finished writing a blog about snakes, Birgitta and I talked about my snake-aversion. “Is it a phobia?” she said.

The dictionary defines “phobia” as persistent, irrational fear of something specific that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it. The answer is yes. But as we talked, Birgitta tried to dispel my fear by Googling a few facts.

She typed “Michigan snakes” into the search bar, forcing me to jump to a chair where I wouldn’t see the screen when pictures appeared.

Phobia for sure.

I know God is working on me, though, trying to rid me of it. Last spring Klaus found a dead snake (a blue racer) in our driveway, apparently run over by a car. As a joke he tucked it under Louisa’s windshield wiper. But wouldn’t you know, it was me who drove the car next, and of course it was drizzling. When the wiper blade shot up, the snake came with it, looking right at me and wiggling as if alive. I didn’t sleep for days.

Then last summer while walking Jack, I saw another run-over snake, this one brown and black. And last fall while riding bikes, we passed a yard-long garter snake traveling on the edge of our road. That’s 3 snakes in 3 seasons, a sure sign God is having his way with me.

Birgitta narrowed her Google search to SW Michigan and read aloud, hoping to prove my fear was irrational. But she kept coming up against facts she said I wouldn’t like, such as: many snakes have 30 to 50 young every year. My mind flashed a picture of snake-carpet covering our entire neighborhood, and my phobia strengthened.

Birgitta said, “When did your fear get started?”

We pinned it down to a 1951 family vacation in Florida. Mary (age 7) and I (age 5) had come across a poisonous coral snake in the yard behind our motel, and Dad’s reaction was uncharacteristic of him. “Stand back!” he yelled. “Get away!” as he attacked with a broom. That probably started my snakes-are-bad mentality.

Studying Genesis and “the serpent of old”* didn’t help, especially after I noticed that the snake was the only animal God ever cursed.**

Whatever the cause of my phobia, I know beyond doubt the Lord is offering to help. As I climbed the stairs to face another worrisome night, Google’s statement that snakes don’t do steps (since they can’t bend to 90 degrees) was reassuring. Then, surprisingly, as I crawled between the sheets, God gave me a tiny sliver of consideration for snakes: no hands, no feet, afraid of mankind, divinely cursed, and always eating dust. It’s not much of a life.

Cartoon snake

Maybe some distant day, we’ll even be friends.

This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength.” (Isaiah 30:15)

*Revelation 12:9, 20:2    ** Genesis 3:14

NO DUMPING

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As jack and I walk through our quiet neighborhood each day, the only sounds are natural ones: blowing evergreens, bird-songs, crickets, Lake Michigan’s waves. Lately, however, the tranquility has been overwhelmed by buzzing chain saws and roaring wood chippers.

Lotsa wood

Tree trimming experts are moving through the area “following the dots” that were painted on tree trunks over a year ago. (Do I understand?) They’re widening air space around electrical wires in an effort to keep them out of harm’s way when storms and high winds cause limbs to fall.

In some cases, entire trees have been brought down but not in the old fashioned way. Although arborists used to shout, “Tim-berrrr!” to warn of a long-falling trunk, today’s workmen take trees down chunk-by-chunk from the top, using sky-high cherry pickers, miles of rope, and men who aren’t afraid of heights.

NO DUMPING PLEASE

Gradually monster-size piles of wood have been left here and there around the neighborhood, waiting to be removed later. This one was humorously deposited at the base of a NO DUMPING sign.

God has a few of his own NO DUMPING signs, hoping we’ll read and heed them, but sadly most of us don’t. One of those is written in especially big letters so we’ll be sure to see it, and it has to do with dumping on ourselves.

Jesus says, “Your sins are absolute trash. Just as garbage that’s left too long in your home gets really vile, sins do the same. They need to be regularly discarded to keep your inner self clean.”

What often happens, though, is we work to clean up all we know is wrong, get ready to give it to God since he offers to haul it away, but then throw it right back into our soul-houses instead. He holds up his NO DUMPING sign, but that doesn’t usually stop us from dumping back into our lives.

Most of us have a desire to obey God’s signs, trusting him to permanently dispose of our sins once we ask for forgiveness. But feeling guilty makes us want to pay for what we’ve done rather than concede that Jesus has already done that for us. To dump it all on him rather than ourselves seems too easy.

Forgiveness of sins ought to hurt more, we think, but therein lies the measureless value of our salvation. Jesus did the hurting for all of us beneath a dumped load of unimaginable weight. For us to continue re-dumping those same sins back onto ourselves again and again is, in a way, refusing to acknowledge what Jesus accomplished on the cross.

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Having watched the tree-cutting activity in our neighborhood for several weeks now, I know the men will be back to remove the pile of wood in the NO DUMPING zone. But am I as diligent in dealing with the sin-debris in my life? And when I am, do I heed God’s NO DUMPING sign or dump it all back to where it came from?

“All the prophets testify about [Jesus Christ] that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” (Acts 10:43)