Milk, Meat and Beef Jerky

As I have had care of my aging Mother after a recent fall, she has taught me a lot. With healing from two broken arms, balance issues, and other medical issues she has a lot to deal with.  I am not sharing this out of any other heart than the one the Lord clearly spoke to me today.  I am not putting her down, or talking badly about her.  I am pointing out human tendencies which I see in her, and God sees in me.

There is a desire to be independent that permeates all she does.  There is also a desire to be pampered and cared for and have her needs met by others, thus her nickname Petunia.  Seems like sometimes the two get reversed.  She is so anxious and desirous to prove her independence she tries to undertake activities she has no business doing alone.  Taking chances she should not take.  Refusing help she should not refuse.  Then there are times that on seemingly easier tasks she wants it done for her.  Things she should be able to do for herself.  Things that even in her state of healing should be simple and mundane.   

Today, as those characteristics crossed, and began to make me cross, God revealed my need to criss-cross my focus.  One question put me in line…”How unlike you is that really?”

Spiritually, how often do we try to go it alone in areas He never intended us to go?  Carry loads and burdens we were never intended to carry?  Take on situations that just are not safe for us on our own?  And yet in simple and seemingly mundane activities of our Christian walk and life we want to have God swoop down and take care of it for us.  Quiet time? No need, Gods got us.  Bible study each day? What for?  He’ll take care of us.  We are the milk drinkers who should be on meat who on occasion decide we are able enough and independent enough to bite off a big ole piece of beef jerky.

1 Corinthians 3:2-3a states, “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it.  Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still living fleshly.”

Hebrews 5:12-14 goes further to reveal to us that “though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.  For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant.  But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” 

So, as I daily ask my Mother to do what she can, and rely on me for what she can’t or shouldn’t, I do so with the fresh awareness that my Lord asks the same of me.