The other day as I looked out the bathroom window, gazing at the birds dancing around on our hillside, I saw at the top of our driveway a skinny, little man. He was wearing a lion cloth in 20 degree weather, had an old locust leg stuck between his front two teeth, and he was yelling something. I opened the window a crack to hear this warning come screeching down the hill at me:
“Prepare your driveway for the Lord, make it straight.”
Now, if any of you have seen my driveway, you know this is a tall order. It is steep and it curves sharply three quarters of the way down. Currently, it is covered with ice and several delivery people in the past have found themselves to be surprise guests because the thing rendered them helpless to leave. It is no picnic to walk on either. Randele has hurt her knee on it. Aaron has hurt his behind, his back, his arm, his leg, basically everything on it. It has a couple of major gullies in it that really should be filled in by someone with gravel. I know, I really should fix the thing. I should extend it straight across our property, make it flat, make it easy and safe to access. But, I haven’t. It is going to take a good deal of effort, effort that I just don’t have right now. Besides, I don’t mind if my way is a little difficult to access. It is nice having some solitude. In fact, I love it. I love the privacy that my steep, icy, gully-filled driveway provides. "Prepare the driveway, make the driveway straight;" who does this little man think he is? Elijah? John the Baptist? And, why does the Lord need a straight, clear way to get through anyway? He is the Lord after-all, can’t he fix my driveway himself?
“Go away skinny, soon to be a human popsicle, little man!” Fix your own way! Make your own way straight! Now go home!”
As I slammed down the window, I watched him just stand there, staring down at me and I realized the truth of the matter; in his loin cloth this little man was almost naked. He had nothing. He was surviving on trust in God alone. This whiner is the wilderness already trusted in God’s provisions more than his own. He was eating grasshoppers out of the abundance that God provides for heaven’s sake. The Lord’s way into his life is already practically arrow straight and perfectly clean. There’s not a lot to get in God’s way in his life.
I guess the slamming of my window is really the same thing as not redoing my driveway; I don’t feel a need to make a straight path for others that might lead right into my soul. Heck, I don’t allow a path to go there myself. I just don’t want to think about what I may find if I look too close. How about we not take a deep look at ourselves this advent, OK? Forget this clean out your soul and wait for the Lord to enter in junk. That sounds good to me. How about we just make ourselves happy with giving nice gifts and receiving nice things over the next few weeks? Sound like a plan?
Keeping one’s path cluttered like this makes me think of a mother who wore a ton of makeup. With the makeup on, this woman presented herself as a perfect woman, with perfect skin, perfect poise, and perfect hospitality. The woman could have costarred as the wife on Father Knows Best. The only thing that didn’t appear to be perfect was her daughter who constantly dressed in black.
“Why don’t you get rid of that depressing clothes and become a real woman?” the mother shared with her daughter one evening.
“Why don’t you get rid of all that make-up so that I can finally get to know you? At least I dress as who I am, a daughter in mourning for her mother. Who are you mom? You’ve never let me in.”
All the daughter wanted was for the mother to make the path straight. She just wanted to be closer to her own mother. Without a doubt, the make-up was covering more than blemishes on the skin. It was a wall. I understand; it’s hard to clear the path. But, I am also beginning to understand that keeping the path cluttered helps no one.
With that said, why don’t we imagine something new for a second. Why don’t we imagine that we clear whatever or whoever is cluttering the path and keeping the Lord out of the deepest regions of our life and see what happens? Come Lord Jesus, be our guest and let these gifts of an axe, a sharp winnowing fork, and fire be blessed? What are you carrying with you Jesus?
The skinny, little man shouts down the hill:
“How else is the Lord going to clear out the garbage? The axe is to cut away the root of your problems, so leave them exposed, don’t cover them back up. The winnowing fork is to throw your impurity into the air so that it blows off to the side and only pureness falls to the ground again. The fire, of course, is to burn the impurity away. Now be quiet and take it like a man! This isn’t going to be the only time he does it! This will be a daily thing from now on. I like to call it repentance and forgiveness.”
You can call it anything you want skinny man…hacking me up with an axe…I think that I would like to call it hell. But then again, what is more like hell, being stuck for the rest of your life with secrets, pain, and regret, or enduring the temporary pain of that stuff being cut out so that you can live in the freedom of the Lord.
I have a distinct image in my head of a grown man in a suit skipping down the sidewalk, like a boy on the first day of summer vacation. He had just left the room of his dying father in the hospital. Was he glad his father was dying? Of course not. His father had just forgiven him for running the family business into the ground years and years before. For 15 years, the man had been too ashamed to see his father. For 15 year he had not received a hug from his father. But on this day of repentance and forgiveness he did. That was something to skip about.
Come Lord Jesus, come. If I can’t do it very well, help me to make your path straight.
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