Get Out of My Shoes!

I’ll be the first to admit I have a limited knowledge of my laptop. I look at the keyboard and there are buttons that I have no idea what they do. Like all these F keys. I know just enough to let me do what I’m doing right now—type out words on a screen. I know the buttons that fix what I’ve said wrong and let me delete or move or correct. But this ctrl and alt…I have no clue. Neither am I curious enough to press one of them to find out. I have this abiding fear of unknown buttons.

My just-turned-three year old granddaughter, on the other hand, is fearless. She’ll take her grandmother’s I-pad and maneuver through it like she designed the software. She’ll find her icons, sort through them and select the game she wants to occupy herself with. When she’s done, she’ll go back to the main menu and start all over. I can’t do that.

It doesn’t make me inferior to a three year old, only less capable. I could probably learn all this, in time, but it seems unfair that she somehow knows how to do something without being taught.

Everything I can do, somebody, somewhere, can do better. I can live with that. There are many things I do that others can’t. I can live with that, too.  

When it comes down to living my life, I’m the best one for that job. Nobody can be me better than I can. Some have tried but failed miserably.

Living our lives is the first obligation we are born with. That is hard enough without trying to live someone else’s as well.

At the red light the other day, someone was impatient that the car in front didn’t turn right on red. Which, by the way, is an option, not a requirement. The car behind loudly stated the fact that the person in front wasn’t driving like the person behind would be driving if he were in the car up front. My thoughts: quit trying to drive two cars at the same time and just take care of the one you’re in.

Lot’s of people try to drive other people’s lives: you ought to…you need to…would you…could you. They see something they want done and think the other person ought to have the assignment of getting it done. Or they find a list of shouldn’ts that they want you to take out of your life. Is that their role or do they have the spiritual gift of supervisor? They are neither my momma nor my Holy Spirit.

In Colossians, Paul says, Whatever you do, do your work heartily for the Lord, not for men. My motivation must come from a higher calling to serve and honor the Lord. To do so, I must be free to obey Him. Placing anyone else equal to or higher than Him is sin.

Trying to run other people’s lives or having them run ours only frustrates us. We must be free to believe God and free to obey Him. Those are paramount.