My
mother-in-law, who will be 93 in September, is self-sufficient, lives alone and
still drives. However, she occasionally has trouble with the TV cable remote
and when she hits the wrong button her cable goes out. In her frustration she’ll
start poking all the buttons, not just the cable remote, but the TV remote as
well. Bill has told her not to touch the TV remote because it makes matters
worse, but that hasn’t stopped her from trying it as a last resort. Devising different
ways to remove temptation Bill put the TV remote away in a drawer, another time
he taped a cautionary note to it, and then finally he took out the batteries.
The other night mother called and said, “I did what you told me not to do. I
got out the TV remote…I put batteries in it.” I’m starting to get an inkling of
how God might feel when believers insist on being in control.
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Long ago, I resolved my great conundrum between “Is everything black and white, or is everything gray?” Jesus is pure white. Everything else is gray. Why do believers insist on being in control? Because God thrust mankind into the situation where it would need to take control of matters that in a perfect situation would not be for its control, or die. We have to take control and till and seed the fields, weed the furrows, cut and thrash the wheat, grind it, bake it. We have to put on our own clothes, wash our own hands, stuff the chow into our own faces. God doesn’t tell us when, how, or where to do these things. He merely gives us the ability to do them and lets us do what we might do. Then we just have to take control and do them.
-----Other things are not for our control. On our way to Arizona a week ago Monday morning, about four AM, almost as far as Colona another doe ran into my headlights. Well, headlight, I should say. The left one. There was not a thing I could do about it. The situation was out of my control, and now a three thousand dollar repair bill is rather out of my control, too. The last time I enjoyed a doe on the road I tried to skate on all the repair bills to my own body. I thought that should be in my control, but I love Char. She wasn’t going to stop fretting until I went to the doctor. So I let that matter slip out of my control as well. And our choice of next President is no more in our control than which of these two are going to wreck our country further. Some things are beyond our control.
-----Then some things should be in our control, but seem not to be. I’ve got to have at least a few moments of TV viewing each day, preferably news. I can relate to your mother-in-law’s ambition for attempting what lies just beyond her abilities when it is only her lack of ability that sets the remote out of her control. I can think of a couple possible ways to run a remote through Bill’s shop in a way which would render it safe to her probing yet useable by anyone with ability. And that would expand her territory of acceptable control. “Oh that thou wouldst bless me and enlarge my border, and that thy hand might be with me, and that thou wouldst keep me from harm so that it might not hurt me!” (I Chron 4:10b)
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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