Today is Your Last Day

While I was upstairs this morning getting ready to begin my day, I saw an undesirable little creature crawling around on the windowsill. I watched it for a couple of seconds before I declared aloud, "Today... is your last day!" I meant it. No more crawling around in the cracks and crevices of my house. No more sneaking into tiny hiding places and showing its ugly little head at an inopportune moment. No more! And then, just like that, I ended its little bug life. No regrets, no shame, no hard feelings. In fact, I smiled as I wiped it into eternity. And it got me to thinking.... What if I was as quick to rid myself of other "undesirable creatures" in my life? How much cleaner would my life be??

There is a game I like to play occasionally on my iPhone called Spazzle. The object of the game is to smack the heads of unwanted rodents as they appear in your garden. They come quickly and randomly, sometimes one at a time and sometimes several at once. But they only appear a couple of seconds before they disappear, so you must strike immediately. As the levels increase, so do the vermin. You must be quick and precise to keep your garden clear of all those pests! Hummm... funny how a little game seems a lot like real life.

So today I think I'll take a good hard look at the windowsill of my life and see what might have wandered in uninvited. Yes, I think I'll find out what undesirables are lurking around unnoticed, making plans to take up permanent residency in my 'home' and then take some time to 'clear out the temple', so to speak. Today is the perfect day to go through the "friend list" in the facebook of my soul and "de-friend" the unwanteds, saying to them loud and clear, "Today... is your last day!"

But, God, I Don't Even Like to Chisel!

This morning as as I was reading in the Book of Exodus, I read a passage that, for some reason, kept nagging at me....

Then the Lord told Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones. I will write on them the same words that were on the tablets you smashed.” ... So Moses chiseled out two tablets of stone like the first ones. Early in the morning he climbed Mount Sinai as the Lord had commanded him, and he carried the two stone tablets in his hands. (Exodus 34:1 & 4)

I don't know why I couldn't seem to get past those verses. After all, there was nothing really significant about them. They were just ordinary little verses on the way to something really amazing... weren't they?

Since I couldn't seem to move on, I kept going back and re-reading that passage. I finally asked, "God, why did You have Moses chisel out the stone tablets? How long must that have taken? I mean, really, God, why didn't You just create something to write the terms of the covenant on? Surely Moses had enough on his plate managing six million people without having to stop and spend several hours chiseling out stone tablets?!"

In my mind, I envisioned Moses--the great man of God, honored and revered by millions--with a hammer and chisel, sweat dripping off his brow, chipping away at a boulder.... And I thought again, "Why didn't God just have one of the 'common people' do the mundane?"

Probably after the fourth or fifth time I read it, I understood: We are pleased with the results. God is pleased with the process. Then I wondered how many times God has asked me to do things that I felt were mundane or even beneath me. I read those verses one last time, this time very slowly. Wow, God... Moses. Really??