Removing the Gunk
Unexpected errands … these are the bane of my day-to-day existence. Anything that needs to happen in a given week that falls outside of groceries, Target runs, or chauffeuring kids is an annoyance that I tend to put off for as long as possible. Recently, one of those unexpected errands that I needed to find time for was going to get my phone fixed. I hadn’t been able to hear anything through the earpiece of my phone for weeks and had been forced to use speaker mode. With up to three kids in the background at any given time, you can imagine how successful my phone conversations were.
Finally, after having enough of watching me struggle with my phone (and knowing I would procrastinate even longer without intervention), my husband decided to take my phone in himself to get it looked at. We were both anticipating that my phone would have to be sent in to be repaired, and so I was expecting to go without it for a few days. My husband returned back home in a surprisingly short amount of time and handed over my phone with a smile.
“Really, it’s fixed already?” I asked suspiciously.
“Yeah,” my husband replied happily. “It was dirty, all they had to do was clean it out. They said it happens all the time with makeup and crumbs and stuff.”
Clearly this was good news to my husband — an easy fix and we’re done! I, however, was instantly embarrassed and a little angry with myself. It wasn’t hard to fathom how my phone had gotten dirty. When was the last time I had done a deep-clean on the diaper bag? Endless amounts of crackers, goldfish and granola bars had been stuffed in and pulled out over time, the remnants of which were ground into a fine powder at the bottom of the bag. “Story of my life,” I thought sarcastically. The five minutes that it would have taken to clean out the diaper bag, when it was just starting to get bad, would have spared me weeks of frustration and my husband a trip to get it fixed.
I wish I had removed the gunk.
The whole experience got me thinking about much more than the crumbs at the bottom of the diaper bag. Where else in my life had I turned a blind eye to “gunk”? It’s so easy to make excuses when I realize that I haven’t spent meaningful time in prayer or when I haven’t taken the time to meditate on God’s Word regularly. Is it because I truly don’t have the time or because I’ve chosen to allow distractions to suck me in?
How many times does checking Facebook turn into 20 minutes of scrolling through my newsfeed absent-mindedly? And now my window of free time has been wasted …
How many times do I allow my to-do list to take precedence over time for spiritual renewal …
The gunk (just like a few goldfish crumbs) isn’t always so noticeable at first. But nonetheless, it builds up over time and begins to mute God’s voice in my life. And when I notice that I’ve allowed the gunk to get it the way, what do I do?
Just as I attempted to circumvent the problem with my phone by turning it on speaker mode, I sometimes tend to think that because our God is all-powerful, he can speak over all of the other distractions in my life. And it’s true, God’s Word and will are powerful, but so is my sinful nature. God has given us the gift of free will, and it’s such a blessing. But that also means that we’re perfectly free to allow our relationship with God to be muffled by outside forces and our own sinful impulses.
Sure, I can still have a relationship with God even among all of life’s distractions … I can still hear some of the sermon and take away the key message while bouncing a fussy baby on my lap. Don’t get me wrong, the time children spend in church learning what it is to worship their Lord is so valuable … but as a mother, I can’t expect an hour of church every week while managing small children to be enough to fill me spiritually.
Jesus had 33 short years on this earth and even in the thick of his ministry, his closest disciples continued to misunderstand his true mission. And on top of that, all of humanity’s salvation was on the line. Talk about having a to-do list! And yet, we see him continually slipping away to find time alone in prayer.
After the feeding of five thousand …
“Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray.” Mark 6:45-46
Before choosing his twelve apostles …
“One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.” Luke 6:12
Before his crucifixion and death …
“Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray.’” Matthew 26:36
And these are just a few instances of Jesus leading us through example. Unexpected errands, fussy children, work problems and all kinds of other distractions are part of life. But I encourage you to remove the gunk where you can, even if it’s just for a few minutes every day, to spend time in God’s Word. We may not have the ability to climb up a mountainside to be closer to God, but no matter where we make the time to be with him, our Lord will come to us so that we can hear him loud and clear.