Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Not My Own

My Dear Wormwood...Now you will have noticed that nothing
throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time
which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly
taken from him...They anger him because he regards his time as
his own and feels that it is being stolen...

"Let's make Valentine cookies right now, Mom."

Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful
possessor of twenty-four hours.  Let him feel as a grievous tax
that portion of his property which he has to make over to his
employers, and as a generous donation...which he allows to
religious duties.  But what he must never be permitted to
doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been
made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright...


The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time;
it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the 
sun and moon as his chattels...The sense of ownership in 
general is always to be encouraged...men's belief that they
'own' their bodies---those vast and perilous estates, pulsating
with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves
without their consent and from which they are ejected at the
pleasure of Another!



Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in
Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form
of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to
be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a
bond-servant... Philippians 2:5-7a

"Is that a belly button?  Wow..."

[above quotation from The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis]

In theory, I'm totally on board with serving my family, but I'm sometimes surprised to find how constant and difficult that task is.  I read the above while James splashed in the bathtub (after the discovery of his belly button) and Ella pressed up against me, disturbing the even track of my highlighter, and thought, "I just look at things so wrongly.  Even in my service, I pat myself on the back because I'm bearing with such patience the interruption of my time and my life and my goals, and caring for these little rascals.  Those precious little rascals.  But the reality is, I am God's servant, this is the job He has asked me to do, and my time is not my own.  

He does not thank the slave because he did the things
which were commanded, does he?  So you, too, when
you do all the things which are commanded you, say,
"We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that
which we ought to have done."
Luke 17:9-10

This is my pep talk to myself before it starts all over again tomorrow.  I grow a little bit every day.  

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