Oven

This old oven.  It has seen us through thousands of meals.  The upper one still working like a workhorse, but the lower; it had started to let me down. 

We had literally two hundred folks for dinner and the bottom oven burned my potatoes. It was set at a warm at 200 degrees but decided to bake at 500. 

Ever since then I have kind of frowned at that oven.  Ever since then I have used it sparingly and cautiously.  In reality, it has become more of a cabinet than a cooker.

We plan to fix it, one day, probably when all the other stuff is fixed that drives me crazier. So, I ignored it.  I ignored it until the stinking little light just wouldn’t shut off. It seemed to tease me that it was still alive in all its erroneous splendor.

I remembered why the light was on.  After another party where it was no help to me, I shoved a pan inside, a pan that had not been scrubbed.  It was the holding area until I could get that chore done.  But this I recalled now with the oven light gleaming on it was a huge pan that had held a banquet of chicken.

Somehow not quite fitting in the oven, it held the door open enough to trigger the light. I would be lying if I said I addressed the problem quickly.

I came to think of the light as a reminder of things to do.  Pans to wash…

Finally, early one morning, I opened the problem oven and I found the over tall pan.  I slammed it into the sink to tell it exactly what I thought of it advertising my ineffectual house cleaning.

I cleaned it and put what my daddy would call, the “dad gum” pan away. To my surprise…………. the light was still on.  And I will admit one turned on in my head as well.  I believe I heard a choir sing, “FINALLY.”

I strolled over and pushed the little button that said, Light. 

To my delight the light turned off.

I try hard not to spiritualize my stupidity but in this case, as the light went off, it was as if every little problem I struggle with on a moment by moment basis lined up like little soldiers waging the battles I have grown so accustomed to.

I wondered just how many could be shut off.  Ones named fear.  Ones named control.  Ones named pride and ones named perfection.

They keep me up.  They steal my joy.  They blind me to what God is doing every day all around me. They cause me to see through a lens that is both unspiritual and completely self-focused.

The shutting off is not a onetime event.  It is a deliberate prayerful task of submitting, surrendering and seeing.  Seeing not with earthly eyes but spiritual ones.

Eyes that embrace the great truth of a great God that loves me and cares for me and carries me. The One that in every way lights my path. And the One that that grieves when I hold my own and usurp Him. 

He waits like a gentleman holding the door to something better.  Bidding me to walk through and blessing me in the process. Shutting off is not shutting down, it is not turning on but turning towards freedom.