Devotion 293 - Cube Chair

I try and listen so hard to what the Holy Spirit is telling me to do that I often miss what He is telling me not to do.

It is equally important but perhaps not as fun.

You see, I am a do – er.  If I am not doing, I am doing nothing, and perhaps I confuse that with being nothing.  Oh I can polish it up and call it resting, or listening or meditating, but it often feels like nothing until I am there and thus, I rarely go.

I didn’t pick up my daughter from preschool.  I sensed the Holy Spirit was telling me not to.  But as usual that meant one less thing to do.  That is an ill fitting cloak for me.

Later, my husband called and said there was something said by the teacher about a new chair and not listening.  I was anxious, more than anxious to read the teacher’s note and understand exactly what this meant.  I envisioned a dunce cap and a corner chair.   

Mothers do that, especially mothers that don’t pick up their daughters...

I looked at the record of the day’s events.  I wonder if someone recorded what I did and ate every day if I would be more careful and eat healthier.  Everything was there, what snack she ate, what books she read, what toys she played with.  But there, in red, was a note that said,

"We are trying a cube chair to help Ava sit and attend better at large group.  Hopefully it will help her."

The cube chair, that was the vogue last year… when we were 3-years old.   We moved passed that at four, unless we wiggle and “need support.”

Even after four children, I go through the customary questions of why my child gets any note, in red.  Why she wiggles, why she needs a cube chair, why she needs extra help.  I asked Ava to tell me why.  She told me, ‘It’s RED.’  It was obvious she was completely thrilled with the days’ events and especially her new chair.

  





She was equally thrilled with a stack of books she wanted to introduce me to.  She had been to the library that morning and presented me with two new books to read.  
I needed to make dinner, I needed to fold laundry.  I needed to do a million things none of which involved standing or sitting still.  I moved on promising to return to the books at bedtime. 

Hours later I sat across from a friend facing a medical crisis.  She approached me as I sat at my work desk, laptop open, a thousand emails bearing down at me and a thousand pieces of paper staring up at me.

I would look at her and then glance at my screen and then my desk and then at her.  I felt as if I were watching a carousel trying to intently focus on one pony but seeing a million pass in a whirl.

I wanted to be present for her but my mind raced.  I promised I would pray.  I looked around realizing I would need to write this down to remember my promise.  I withdrew a notebook from my purse.  The same notebook I kept all my notes and papers in as the school year had begun.  I saw my preschool notes and remembered the cube chair.

The cube chair looks like a big comfy plastic box with one side open with the sides and the back envelope.  It helps one attend, and stay focused. I needed one too.

I sat back in my desk chair, withdrew a pencil, jotted down my friends name and wished for a cube chair wondering if this is what the Father meant in Hebrews when He spoke of the “great cloud of witnesses.”

What if the great cloud of witnesses were my cube chair.  The ones that have gone before, and the ones that are alongside me now. 

The mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, pastors, friends and strangers, that have prayed 

and ushered in the Holy Spirit to chase out loneliness and desperation. 

What if I did less to do more for the kingdom?  What if I attended more by attending to many fewer things?  What if I held every piece of my agenda up to the mirror of His righteousness and decided then what I would schedule?

What if I looked at everyone in my path as His and cherished them?  What if my time in the cube chair builds the kingdom even if I am doing nothing but reading to my daughter or praying for my friend?

By what measurement have I measured my life, His or mine?

My daughter has learned to wiggle from me, but has she learned to worship?

Beloved we are the great cloud of witnesses for one another.  We are the hand that holds the lost and the hearts that embrace the hurting.

I am climbing into my cube chair, and I pray you are there with me.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”  Hebrews 12:1