Through the Roof

Okay, so if you know me, you know that one of my biggest pet peeves are people who prescribe what a Christian’s life should look like.  Nothing hits the center of my not-so-funny bone faster than the Christian who looks at their happy life and decides that that is what every Christian’s life should look like… and if it doesn’t, then they must be struggling with some sort of sin.

When you work in ministry long enough (I can, of course, say this after my less than two years experience) you begin to see women who judge other women’s marriages because it doesn’t mirror their own.  One woman has decided to be a stay-at-home mom who has joined the carpool group and is a room mom and puts a homemade meal on the table every night and then hand washes the dishes before she puts the children down for the night and then devotes the next three hours to hanging on her husband’s every word.  That is great!  But what isn’t so great is when she looks at her friend, who goes to work five days a week and sometimes swings through KFC for dinner for the family.  Her family may eat at the table, or they may eat in front of the TV, and then they go off and maybe work a little more from home, or maybe one takes a nap while the other one reads.  That’s a great family, as well!  The thing is, what makes a great family is when it is full of God-loving people who love each other.  It will most assuredly look different in your house than it does in mine.  The problem comes in when Mrs. Suzie Homemaker looks at Mrs. Busy Bee and says that because one marriage doesn’t mirror the other, they must be having problems.  There is NO TRUTH to that!

I was reading in my morning devotions about the four friends who carried their paralytic friend to the house where Jesus was.  Discouraged by the crowds, they then climbed to the roof of the house and lowered him down through the ceiling.  We read in Job about his friends giving him all sorts of advice when his life was falling apart… about how they were so positive that there must be sin in his life since he was so sick.  We don’t know whether these four friends had similar conversations.  Maybe they got it wrong at first, as well.  But here’s what we do know:  they saw a hurting friend.  They carried a hurting friend to the Source they knew he needed.  When trouble got in the way (the crowds), they found another way… nothing was going to keep them from getting their hurting friend to Jesus!  And then they lowered him through the roof, and they let the Master do what He needed to do.

What would I love to see in the Christian family?  A whole lot less telling each other what our lives should look like, and a whole lot more carrying the ones we love to the Savior, and letting Him tell us what our lives should look like!

Amber Lea