Baba’s Bourbon Bottle
My grandmother Rita has always been affectionately known to us as “Baba”. My sister Bethany couldn’t pronounce “Grandma” when she was little so the nickname stuck. She passed away about 14 or so years ago from cancer, at the young age of 66.
I’m not a real sentimental person when it comes to objects. I’m by no means a pack rat and get rid of things regularly. However, I never dreamed of getting rid of Baba’s Bourbon Bottle. I use it for olive oil mostly, it is beautiful, clear crystal. It has an amazing shape, with intricate details. It has a beautiful stopper on top which I adore.
Well, this afternoon, I decided to reorganize, and probably get rid of some stuff I no longer needed. I was getting into that cabinet over the fridge, you know the one where things go to be forgotten! Teetering on a chair, I picked up Baba’s Bourbon Bottle. In a moment of clumsiness, the lid toppled off, and hit my white tile floor with such force that it shattered into pieces all over the place.
Bummed out, I got to the task of cleaning up the mess I had made. As is the norm with any mess, you start with the big pieces first, but then I realized that the pieces weren’t isolated to just my kitchen, they had made it all the way out into my living room, which is of course white tile too….making the clear crystal hard to find.
As I was picking up the pieces, my mind wandered (as it usually does – doesn’t take much for me to get distracted). I was thinking about a current struggle in my life, and having a little conversation in my mind with God about why it wasn’t getting any easier…..”Why am I still struggling with this God? Why won’t you make it better? Why can’t you just take it away?” I started thinking about how the pieces of glass had gone WAY further than I had thought they would, and how I was having a hard time seeing the little shards of glass that were littering my house.
I began to think about how SIN affects every area of your life. How lack of obedience to God, in the smallest part, will have repercussions on a grander scale, and they can shatter you in ways you never dreamed. We may think that the little white lies, or the gossip, or the discontentment, or the anger in our lives are no big deal…….but sin is sin…..it says so in God’s word. God made me realize today that this current struggle wasn’t getting any better because I wasn’t obeying Him in the small things.
As I hunted through the living room looking for pieces I had to turn on the light, as dusk was snatching the sunlight from the windows. As I flipped it on, I was reminded that light exposes the hidden things. When the light shined, the minute pieces of glass began to sparkle and I was able to pick them up. When we come to God, and ask Him to expose the hidden things in our heart, sin that we may not even realize exists, He is faithful to do it in an instant.
Now, I’ve gathered all the broken pieces, and I sit here looking at Baba’s Bourbon Bottle. I still have it, I can still use it, but it is incomplete. My final reminder in this little “divine mishap” today was that sin will always steal a little something from you. God restores, as He has been so faithful to heal brokenness in my life, but you can not always get those pieces back, whether it be wasted time or friends lost.
It’s amazing how the little chores of life can become lessons, as you let God speak to your heart. My prayer as I finished the clean up was Psalm 51, that God would create in me a heart that is clean and pure. That I can present myself before Him as a woman who will obey, even in the small things.
So, there you go, lesson learned through Baba’s Bourbon Bottle. I hope that today you will see God and obey Him in the little things.
Complete in Jesus,
Shannon
I love me some C.S. Lewis
God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world -C.S. Lewis
Wow, right!? My reading with C.S. Lewis goes pretty much the same every time. I find myself having to read sentences, paragraphs and pages over and over again so I can grasp what my eyes just read.
The quote above made me get this visual picture. When we are feeling pleasure, our hearts feel at peace, not much going on in our heads….like when you are sitting on the beach, waves crashing, the sun warming your face, not a care in the world. ”God whispers to us in our pleasures”. We whisper back, “Thank you God, for this amazing place!”
We are often faced with temptations, times when our conscience is kicked into high gear…”should I, or shouldn’t I?” Our minds are a little louder now, we are speaking to ourselves a little more now…..”God speaks to us in our conscience”
But pain…..pain is a different story. If we are not displaying the hurt outwardly, inwardly we are screaming at the top of our lungs..”WHY GOD? WHY? WHY WOULD YOU LET THIS HAPPEN TO ME? WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS?” Yet, God’s voice can be louder than our own. I once heard it said, that in times of adversity, we should stop listening to ourselves, and start listening to God. He “shouts to us in our pain.” Why? Because sometimes He has to. To remind us that He is bigger, stronger, and above any pain we would ever feel. He is reminding us that He has not disappeared. I envision Him shouting “Calm Down!” Or to be a little more Scriptural “Peace! Be Still!”
GOD HAS MORE!
Do you believe that? I was listening to Pastor Britt Merrick on the radio tonight as I drove home from church. He was speaking about his 6 year old daughter who is suffering from cancer. The words he said that stuck with me were: ”Fruit comes from adversity”.
His point was when we have gone through the darkness of despair so thick that you can’t see…..and come out the other side realizing that God never left you, you emerge stronger, wiser, and brimming with faith that God is all in all.
Have you gone through pain, sorrow, suffering, sickness? Have you seen God come through in the end? I know that without the deepest sorrow I have encountered, I would not know God’s love in such a deep way. The adversity has produced wisdom, faith, endurance, and a drive to keep on going even when things are drop down, give up, hopeless.
Maybe you are going through a huge inferno of strife right now? Do you feel alone? sorrow? sadness? pain? fear?
The Bible says “Do not fear for I am with you”. I know you’ve heard it, I know you’ve read it, but stop for a second, and let it soak in…….let it seep all the way down to the most doubtful part of your heart. You know the place…..it’s where you have accepted that those most painful things will never stop, that the sin will always fester, that the guilt will always breed more and more guilt, the shame will embed itself into your soul, until you are so paralyzed that you are rendered useless.
Do not fear because God has AMAZING things for you. I mean it! Had God not rescued me from my own place of sorrow, sin and despair, I would still be wallowing in hopelessness.
God has MORE! SO MUCH MORE!!