A Plate Parable

 

This evening I was washing the dinner dishes. Nothing unusual, I know. In fact, it was feeling rather ordinary.

But then, the something unexpected and rather revolutionary happened.

I don't even remember how it came to pass, or what I did, but somehow I put a freshly washed plate on the dish drainer rack the wrong direction. And then the aha! moment came. I had actually put it in the correct direction! Just think! How many times...perhaps thousands?...I have been putting those plates in the wrong way, simply because that's the way I put them in. Now, however, they will dry more effectively and will be easier to put away because they are placed in the way they are meant too be.

I wonder how many aspects of our lives have the same problem. We just do things because, well, that's the way we do it.

I don't invite our neighbors over for dinner, because well, I never do.

I decide things my way because, well, that's how I do it.

I put limits on our limitless, awesome God because, well, I do. 

But we can turn away from the "that's just the way I do it" and have an aha! moment too. It simply means shedding the old in exchange for the new, and allowing our King to be our guide.

Light us aflame, Abba, show us Your way.

Because, well, its the only way to life.

  

 Whether you turn to the right or to the left,

your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying,

“This is the way; walk in it.”
Isaiah 30:21