Pass the Spoon

I realized this week that sometimes all God is asking me to do is pass a spoon.  You know, like when you are making dinner and hoisting a heavy pot over a serving dish and pouring out the contents; you need a spoon to scrape out the pot but, inevitably, none are within reach.  Then, someone else walks into the kitchen.

"Can you grab me a spoon, please?"

"Sure, here you go."

(Nota Bene: If you ever read this kind of dialogue in fiction you need to close the book and seek out a better usage of your time.)

This is not a monumental request with a prerequisite self-sacrificing response.  Neither the spoon passer or the pass-ee would even think the exchange worth mentioning if asked what they did with their day.  It wouldn't be worth recording in your life annals.

May 23, 2014

Dear Diary,

Today I fetched a spoon for someone who needed it.  I know.  This stuff just keeps happening.  

Stay lovin',

Me

P.S  Also, the next Christian who uses the phrase: 'do life together',--so help me--gets the aforementioned spoon up their nose.  

Literal spoon passing is a nothing in the grand scheme of the day, let alone the Grand Scheme of Things.  But the pot did need scraping out and the spoon needed to be passed.  Someone--anyone nearby could have done it.  But I get all caught up in myself and thinking that maybe God means for me to be this generation's Wilberforce, instead of the girl who moves stuff around when asked.  And, honestly, when you are the one holding that heavy dutch oven aloft, you just want someone to step in and lend you the help you are looking for.

The great thing is that after I've passed that spoon to the person who needed it, I have no bearing upon the outcome of the utensil's usage.  I passed the spoon.  What the person scraping out the pot does with it is their affair.  They know what they wanted it for--what the intended purpose was.  In fact, I might hand over the spoon expecting it to be used for scraping out the pot; only to see that the cook was looking to taste test their creation instead.  It really doesn't matter.  I am the spoon passer--not the cook.  I may get a 'thank you' for my assistance, but that is really all there is to it.  I did my job and moved on.  I left the outcome to the one in charge.

I think we get hung up on the idea of outcomes.   We go into this self-involved thinking that only results in misery for us.  If God is asking me to do something, it's probably critical and therefore of paramount importance that I make a success of it…'  This is only sort of true.  And by sort of, I mean that I think the focus is all wrong.  Yes.  If God is asking you to do something, it's important.  But, in my experience, it hasn't been for the reason that I envisioned ahead of time.  Sometimes I think He's just asking to see if I am listening and willing to be obedient to His request.  Turns out, God has bigger things going on than I can imagine.  So, instead of wasting my time feeling responsible for outcomes that God never intends--I think I'll just hand over the nearest spoon and move on.