I was in the kitchen with my son last week and we were cleaning up a little bit….well…ok….we were cleaning up a lot. Whatta-ya-gonna-do? I’m a kitchen guy. I like to cook. When I cook, I like to have a clean kitchen as opposed to my wife who can cook quite comfortably with stacks of dirty knives on the counter and a table full of stuff…but she does make a mean plate of pasta!
So, there we are moving stuff off the counter and wiping it all down, when we go to move the microwave. Ever done that before? You move a toaster, or a mixer, or some appliance that typically does not budge from the point you move into the house until the point you pack it all up to move into your next house? Yea…it’s a little messy back there. Needless to say, there was a bit of a mess underneath and behind the microwave. My son carefully pics up the espresso machine and carries it to the table as we clean the area. As we are replacing the appliances into their proper positions…my son, God bless him, grabs the espresso machine, and the small 4 cup carafe comes crashing to the floor shattering into a hundred little pieces. You could tell we were father and son at that moment, cuz neither one of us moved…blinked…or breathed. He was too scared as to how I was going to react, I was deflated because I went all over the city trying to find a local coffee joint that could replace the last glass carafe that my wife accidentally broke. I kept whispering to myself, “it’s just a glass, it was an accident, he was only trying to help. He’s just a kid. I was a kid once, a long…long time ago.” I asked him to go get the broom and we began to clean up the small mess. Days later, I look back and see how that same experience is much like our relationship with God.
You see the Father moves our stuff around and reveals all the dirt left behind and underneath everything we attempt to use to hide our mess. And when we lose it, he’s right there to pick up the broken pieces. If we are wise enough to allow him to do so.
