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“I can’t think of a single scenario in which I would choose to spend several hours of my finite time on this earth pulling weeds.” I tell myself during our church lesson on self reliance and hard work.\u00a0 I wonder why these lessons always seem to come back to the pulling of weeds. I wonder if perhaps weed pulling is the badge of the righteous, a key into heaven.<\/p>\n
I think for a moment–judging by the thoughts and stories shared by the\u00a0 good mothers in our class–that, by not pulling weeds, perhaps I am causing irreparable damage to my children, maybe even leading them down a pathway to eternal damnation.<\/p>\n
The thought scares me until I remember Manhattan high rise families. Manhattan high rise children surely never pull weeds. I feel fairly confident that Manhattan high rise children are not destined to an afterlife spent in purgatory.\u00a0 This brings me peace.\u00a0 We are just Manhattan high rise people living on country acreage.\u00a0 We’ll be alright.<\/p>\n
As a young girl I believed in order to reach the pinnacle of womanhood–to be righteous, capable and good–I needed to master three things: baking bread, canning food and quilting.\u00a0 After all this is what all of the good, righteous, capable pioneer women had done and what good, righteous, capable women all around me were still doing. Yes, doing these things would make me very righteous indeed.<\/p>\n
Except…<\/p>\n
I hate quilting.\u00a0 And I have a Sam’s Club membership and no garden (I know, I know… righteous people are supposed to have a garden) so I find canning food to be a tedious waste of my time. But I do like baking bread. On occasion.\u00a0 Yes, occasional bread is good.<\/p>\n
While experimenting with these things I made a miraculous discovery.\u00a0 Even though I hated these wholesome, righteous people activities, I still felt righteous and strong and good. And I realized that somewhere, somehow in my young mind I had blurred the lines between the activities that certain righteous people choose to do and actual righteousness.\u00a0 I mistakenly believed that in order to be righteous we all must be the same.<\/p>\n
Now I know better. I know that we were never meant, nor asked to be the same.\u00a0 I know that it’s an impossibility that will drive us to destruction if we try to make it so.\u00a0 And that there is but one thing in which we are required to agree.<\/p>\n
Commandments and Covenants.\u00a0 God’s Family Rules.\u00a0 Much like the rules we make for our own families, printed out on cute little plaques that hang on our walls, God’s rules are designed to keep us safe and happy and to bring love and order to the human family and our earthly home.<\/p>\n
Commandments and Covenants are our common ground. Our touchstones for righteousness.\u00a0 In these we are the same.<\/p>\n
But in all else it’s up to us to decide what we will do, how we will live and what our lives should be.<\/p>\n
“When I run I feel God’s Pleasure”<\/em><\/p>\n
(<\/em>Chariots of Fire) <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It’s up to us to find those things–those gifts, talents and interests–that make us feel God’s pleasure.\u00a0 For where we find His pleasure there will we find righteousness.<\/p>\n
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“I can’t think of a single scenario in which I would choose to spend several hours of my finite time on this earth pulling weeds.” I tell myself during our church lesson on self reliance and hard work.\u00a0 I wonder why these lessons always seem to come back to the pulling of weeds. I wonder … Continue reading “Except, I hated those wholesome, righteous people activities…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318,"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions\/318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsforthisday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}