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I
was in a zone, working in my basement office. For all I knew, it could
have been midnight, or Tuesday, or 1896.
But then, I blinked and came
back into the here and now. I let myself acknowledge reality. Oh. You
mean I’m not really in 1896 Newport?
Thrust back into real-time, I
noticed it. The time. It was 9:30. My retired husband had told me two
hours ago he was going to work on the mower.
Go check on him.
I argued with myself. I didn’t
want to stop working.
Go check on him.
Okay, then.
I interrupted my work, grabbed
an ice-cold Gatorade, and braved the 90 degree heat and the 100 percent
humidity to find him.
I was relieved to see he was not
hurt (when God nudges, I have a tendency to expect the worst). He was
outside hauling the rocks that emerged from our acreage like
hefty
tulips each spring, moving them to a flow channel. His T-shirt showed
sweeping dark stains, evidence of his hard work in the steam bath that
is Kansas in the summer.
He heartily downed the drink,
told me what he was doing, and complained about the broken mower blade
that had found a rock he’d missed. I listened (sweating just standing
there), then eagerly retreated inside, back to my air-conditioned cave,
back to my work that required only mental sweat and effort.
Yet added to this slight feeling
of guilt regarding my creature comforts, I felt good about going
outside when I was needed, and giving my husband a bit of relief. He
was happy. I was happy. God was happy.
But
on the way downstairs, I found myself saying a prayer I’d never prayed
before: Lord, please spur me to do good every chance I
get—every chance.
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It
struck me as odd that I’d
never prayed this before, for shouldn’t my life’s goal be to do good to
all people all the time? Yet I knew my first inclination was to do what
I wanted to do as long as I could. Every day. Every hour. Why would I
ask God to increase the nudges, which would result in more
interruptions to my time?
Because that’s what I should do.
Presently, I’m not far into the
aftermath of the prayer, and I can’t say it’s been 100 percent
effective (at least on my end), but what I have
managed is to accept that I do want God to spur me
to do the things I should do—always. Not just occasionally. When
there’s a chance, I want Him to nudge me to take it.
Of course, that doesn’t mean
I’ll always say yes.
But until He gets rid of that
pesky free-will thing, it’s the best He can do—making me do the best I
can do.
“For we are God’s workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance
for us to do” (Eph. 2:10 NIV).
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