Maybe I Shouldn't Ask For More

I was thinking, this afternoon, about a story I’d heard once. One woman said, "Lord, if you help me lose twenty pounds, I’ll never ask You for another thing." The other woman, hearing, said, "Are you nuts? If the Lord helped me lose twenty pounds, I’d ask Him for a whole new wardrobe!"

Upon reading that, I’m pretty certain that every one of you immediately reacted. Perhaps you stigmatized the one as being greedy, and admired the other for her ability to be content. Or perhaps you admired the one for being bold, and condemned the other for being passive. As most of you probably know by now, I was born passive, and lived that way for the first thirty-plus years of my life. No more! But that’s not to say it isn’t a struggle to maintain a bold attitude toward the Lord, especially in the face of the worldly approval and religious disapproval of many of my choices.

One of the aspects of our attitude about boldness is what we consider to be the purpose in our lives. Are we here to take up space? To have a good time? To muddle through? To keep everyone happy? Or are we here to live and grow and become the movers and shakers of the world? In other words, are we supposed to be the head, or the tail, or somewhere in between?

Looking at our purpose brings our particular type of boldness into perspective. Take David, for instance. He killed a lion and bear. His brothers, apparently, thought he ought to be satisfied with that. But David was bold—greedy, you might say. He understood that the lion and the bear were practice. He wasn’t afraid to ask the Lord for the head of Goliath in addition to them, because he understood that the lion and the bear weren’t the point: Goliath was. But the animals had to happen first in his life, otherwise he wouldn’t have known how to handle Goliath. Perhaps he wouldn’t have known to run at him, instead of away from. He may not have been so quick to run and cut off Goliath’s head the moment he was down, if not for his experience with the beasts. And you may say that even Goliath was merely practice for even greater things that David faced later on.

Nearly every day, someone sees my "new" house for the first time, and says "wow." And with every "wow," with I wish I had a house this nice being strongly inferred, the guilt piles on. Should I stop here? Shouldn’t I be satisfied with some of the old rooms as they are? Shouldn’t I stop spending money? But could I be trusted to build something beautiful to house dozens of hurting girls, if I can’t even finish one smallish project for myself? Can I truthfully convey to them "you’re worth this," if I don’t think I’m worth it?

Now, you know, is practice for later. For each of us.

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