Tuesday: Now I’m Just Cutting Down a Tree
WEEK 49
TUESDAY
NOW I’M JUST CUTTING DOWN A TREE
Matthew 13:31-33
The power to put up with one’s own imperfection and live with it is inherent in the Christian mastery.
I have always disliked hearing played back a recording I have made. I skip it every time I can. For I know I’ll hear my haltings, my hesitations, and my mistakes of grammar and thought and expression liberally sprinkled throughout. Then I’ve said to myself, “Stanley Jones, you do nothing perfectly, for you are an imperfect person. Therefore you’ve got to learn to live with your imperfect self doing an imperfect work. But God accepts you as you are; now you accept yourself and love yourself in spite of your imperfection.” And I’m learning that lesson.
A Hindu businessman came to an Ashram in Sat Tal. We had a conference together afterward, and he said, “I went away walking on air, not touching the earth.” That hour together cemented our hearts. But the next day as we marched back in procession, he was marching with me. As we sang the processional, he was out of tune. But the group and I absorbed his out-of-tuneness by a louder in-tuneness, so we marched along without a break. We loved him and accepted him in spite of his being out of tune; for we knew if he stayed long enough, he would catch the tune. He was expressing his newfound joy, expressing it badly, but the point is that he was expressing it. We took the intention of the tune. It was perfect love but not perfect expression of that love.
A man was found cutting down a tree. A neighbor asked him what he was doing, and he replied: “I’m building a house.” “Aren’t you too old to begin to build a house?” “Well, if I had to lay the foundation, pour the concrete, saw the joists, make the window frames, put on the roof and paint it, then it would be too much. But today I’m just cutting down a tree.” And soon he would have his house! “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Matt 6:34 KJV), and sufficient unto the day is the opportunity thereof is a way to live that works.
O Christ, you have broken up our tasks and our days into workable portions; help me to do the next little thing in a big way. Then everything will be big. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Every little task today shall be done under the eye of Jesus, in the power of Jesus, and for the love of Jesus.