Devotion 411 - Fifteen

Everyone wants it. Everyone expects it.

Everyone wants their 15 minutes.

We want the 15 extra we need when running late for an appointment. We want the 15 back when we have said something we regretted. We want to relive the 15 where we acted too fast or moved too slow. We seek the 15 at the end of a long day or a long life.

Fable tells us we will all have 15,  those made up of fame.

 My daughter gets this.  She looks hard and low for it.  It strikes me odd that at her ripe old age of 6-years; she strives to be famous. I get an email that I read out loud to her. It was about her and something cool she had done.

A dear sweet friend of ours had sacrificed an evening with my little girl to bake cupcakes.  This friend gets it.  She gets the fact that life is made up of moments and she is determined to spend her moments memorably well.

 

After a long day of work, she made herself my daughter’s present.  She whipped up homemade frosting and dug into dough.  I watched as these girls made and decorated dozens of cupcakes.  It was beautiful work, loving work, cherished work.

We went to bed and my little daughter asked what we would be doing with all her gorgeous sweetness.  I was thinking they would find their way to the freezer.  Ava had other ideas. She wanted a bake sale.  In my mind, a bake sale looks a lot like a lemonade stand and with snow on the ground; mama wasn’t buying.

Ava had it all planned.  She would come to my work and sell office to office.  All the money would go towards the collection we were doing at church for refugee families. I love this kind of heart.  We said yes.

She sold and she marched her change into church.  Some weeks later, some folks very far away heard resources would be coming their way from a little bake sale, from a little heart.

I read the email and Ava asked,  “Am I famous?”  For the first time,  I could tell her truly, she was.  “Today, you are the best kind of famous,” I told her, “You are famous to God.”

Someone sacrificed an evening, someone sacrificed their goodies, and a lot of someones gave away quarters so that a little girl could think about something far bigger than herself.  True fame is to be known by the One who knows and sees and creates and hears and loves ALL.

Where are you spending your 15?

 

What if today, we each held 15 in our hands and then gave it away?

What if we bought a coffee for the guy behind us in the drive thru line?

What if we actually stopped and listened with entirety of heart after we asked, “How are you?”

What if we took the monies we were going to use on something extra, and simply placed it in the hands of a stranger?

What if we refrained from negative for 15 and filled our children, our spouse or our co worker with positive?

What if we poured 15 out doing something just because?

What if we took 15 and wrote what a friend has meant to us?

What if we spent 15 thanking Jesus?

What if we chose to pray for 15 and called out the names of people that have hurt us or helped us or held us?

What if you took the time to ask Jesus how to spend just 15 minutes of your day, what do you think He would say?

 

I think it would be way simpler than we can imagine.  I believe it would involve love and caring and compassion and forgiveness, but it would be quiet and transparent and holy.

I want that.  I want to know that some portion of my day was spent thinking about Him, living for Him and loving Him by loving extraordinarily well those around me.

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.  

Colossians  3:12-17