Monday, March 10, 2008

Getting Stuff Done

I reflect often on how strange it is to me that God would have children take up so much time and energy.  Certainly we could all get more done if children could raise themselves.  My brain, formed by this utilitarian culture in which we live in the United States, is just baffled.  After all, isn't "getting stuff done" the chief virtue in life, the proof of a life well-lived?  Today I checked 4 significant items off of my mental to-do list.  This was, then, certainly a good, well-spent day, right? I mean, we all KNOW this isn't true.  But then how is it that when I spend hours laughing and playing with my 18 month old I'm "taking time off?"  In sharing quality time with my daughter, where does this lingering sense come from that I didn't actually do anything.    

But God certainly understood the implications of children needing their parents' time and attention to the vast extent that this is the case.  When I reflect on this, I experience a real shock that reverberates deep within my soul as I come to understand on ever-deeper levels that all those things I could be doing (really good things - like, teaching the Bible, tutoring kids with difficult family situations, gathering food for the homeless, etc., etc., etc.) are not as important to God as my caring for this one little person.  That is so weird.  I mean, what am I raising her to do?  Raise kids of her own?  Is this the created world just an endless, pointless cycle of ceaseless child-raising?  Certainly that can't be the case.  

But this created world is a place, I am confident, in which God wants us to learn to love.  It is easy to feel like I'm accomplishing things, great things, when I get a new degree, when I present a paper before a large, appreciative audience, when I explain a difficult passage of Scripture to a student in need of clarification.  And surely those things are important, right?  But never have I learned to give myself up for another person like I have through embracing motherhood.  Just maybe the One who turned the world upside down through a child born to no one special in a little, insignificant town - maybe this One has it in him to call me to transform the world through holding this child.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that was a great read. Thank you very much for that. I have from time to time stopped and wondered what exactly God wants me to "accomplish" in my life.

Was it an M.Div. or was it to simply pastor this church? Maybe it is to go
get my D.Min and teach.

Then I spend time with my family or time with one of my boys as I did on the College road trip we just took and think that this is it.

I am here to help this Young man grow up and to become all that God wants him to be. This yuong man that if he truly understands his gifts can make a huge impact in the world around him.

When I think of those implications and that task, I often wonder why couldn't God just want me to go back to school and take a class on macramé. :)