My brother posted on facebook today and quoted C.S.Lewis:
How glibly I can pray something like “Make me an instrument of Your peace”; how spiritual I can sound to my friends. But I confess here and now that I am no such instrument, and in my most spiritually astute moments I rather doubt I really want to be one.
“I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through”–C S Lewis
True, very true, so very very true, Professor Lewis and brother…about all of us.
Last week as part of our prayer journaling in “Unbinding the Gospel” we were invited to try an experiment. Take an hour, any hour in our day. In everything we did during that hour, we were to ask God first what God wanted us to do. Should we get out of this side of the bed or that? Should we eat oatmeal or raisin bran? What should we wear? It sounded a bit ridiculous, but we were encouraged to just have fun with it.
The day I tried this, I started out with the first morning hour. I sort of assumed that God didn’t care whether I ate raisin bran or not, but I asked anyway. It was a silly game, right? However, when I turned to the sink piled high with dishes, a quick question of “what should I do?” ended up in my rinsing and putting things in the dishwasher…without complaining about it. There where a few other things that I think I did because I asked God first, like reading scripture before turning on the computer and checking email.
But I learned the most from this exercise, not by those things I did or didn’t do when I asked God about it. I learned the most from my own response when I looked at the time and noticed that my hour was up. This, would you believe, was my first thought: Thank goodness that’s over. Now I can do what I want!
LOL! Professor Lewis, how right you and my brother are! I haven’t had the courage to try the exercise again yet.
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