I’m sweating.
I know I’m not alone. Dot-gov says it’s 74 F., (and it’s not even eight o’clock in the morning), with an expected high of 94 and heat index of 105.
Of course, drinking my delicious hot tea probably doesn’t help.
But I love my tea, on the patio, in the morning. If I waited for perfect conditions I’d be inside all day most every day.
My dear brother and sister-in-law from Minnesota are visiting. It’s been terrific, but the high heat and 2000% humidity doesn’t suit them either. We took them over to a friend’s place to pick some sweet corn, thankfully right before this life-altering weather took hold.
I’m thinking of heading over there again myself this afternoon when they go visit their daughter nearby, to get some more for them to take home tomorrow. I’m starting a new sport: Midwest Extreme Corn Pickin’.
Life’s too short to wimp out.
Of course, the farmers here in the Midwest don’t wait for perfect conditions either; I’m really happy about that. I like to eat.
I’m also really appreciative that God didn’t wait for me to get my life together before He invited me into His home. In fact, I didn’t even have to wipe my feet! Here’s how one of His early saints put it:
“When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners…But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”
I suspect lots of people still think of Christianity as achieving some perfected state. It’s not about my perfection, however, it’s about His. He doesn’t even want me to wipe my feet before I come inside the door. Instead, Jesus has this habit of washing our feet Himself! In other words, my sin is the “perfect condition” for the application of His perfect righteousness.
He also makes it clear that it’s His washing that gives me the capacity to be clean. There’s definite partnership in this situation, but it’s not until He washes my spiritual condition that I can clean up my act.
“By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence.”
So there’s no waiting for this relationship to get going, or it may not come to pass. It’s like waiting for perfect conditions to make picking the corn more comfortable—instead, it’ll just rot in field.
“Indeed, the ‘right time’ is now. Today is the day of salvation.”
As far as the sweet corn is concerned, I’ll just wait for the heat index to get a little higher.
[Postscript: In the interest of honesty, our farming friends picked corn and brought some out to us this morning so I wouldn’t have to endure the heat. There’s another whole analogy there…)
Romans 5:6,8; 2 Peter 1:3; 2 Corinthians 6:2 Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
INSPIRATION with an ATTITUDE 