Five Minute Friday ~ Rest

What about all the rest?

You know, that stuff that remains after the best or most important or loudest or priority or prominent or easiest and least resistant has been cared for or dealt with? 

Those two or three dishes that somehow find their way to the sink after everything else is washed up?

Or the bit of food that is left after dinner... the stuff that gets shoved into a container, pushed into the back of the fridge and then is forgotten until it starts to either grow again or stink really, really badly?

Or the junk that remains laying around my girls' bedroom (6 girls in one room really is recipe for a most of the time natural disaster-sort-of-mess... I know because I brave walking in there most mornings after they leave for school) when one of them comes and says "I've cleaned up my part. THEY can do the rest." 

And then I hear or read or even say words like these: 

• "We do not live in a spiritual welfare state. God is not going spend His time doing the very things He equipped us to do. We need to do our part and having done it, trust God to do the rest. That is the proper way of looking at troubling situations and pressing problems."
• "Seek to do the best you can with what you have available and then let go and let God take care of the rest."
• "Do your best and then have faith that God will do the rest."

I don't want to imply that those are inherently wrong or bad words to say, because they do contain important truth.

I do want to communicate that I'm uncomfortable with those words...  and what I know in my heart they mean if I would say them... at least today. (I despise my own fickleness at times.)

For...? They can also mean that what I do is the most important, the most key and critical part, at least in my mind. They can reveal that, in my head, I've set the picture topsy-turvey where somehow I'm in focus in the foreground and God is relegated to the nothing more than maybe interesting or worse yet distracting scenery. They point out my arrogance that generally I don't even recognize until it hits me full force in the face on days like today.

For what God does is never just (just as in by a narrow margin, barely, merely...)-- 

• a less than whole or insignificant remainder,
• a picking up of the bits and pieces I got too tired or disgusted or frustrated to deal with,
•  less important or noteworthy or commendable,
• the bit that will later be forgotten and spoil and thrown away because no one wanted it
• gather those never ending pieces that otherwise convince the job can never be complete...

I keep thinking of these words:

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.  

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant. (from Colossians 1)

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Now it's your turn!

"Now, set your timer, clear your head, for five minutes of free writing without worrying about getting it right.

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back... and invite others to join in.
3. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is, like, the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community..."