Often we laugh that we are truly "whining and dinning" when our children are screaming at the table for whatever reason. Although I usually post positive about them, because they are great, there are days when the whine feels overwhelming. Today is such a day, perhaps neither slept well as it was hot last night, perhaps the heat of the day has already broken through their skins or perhaps making waffles for breakfast and thus eating later was a bad call...whatever the circumstances it is not even 9am and all I hear is the high pitch complaint that everything is going wrong accompanied, of course, by the tears of true sorrow.
By this AM, as I was eating breakfast and trying to ignore the demands for a different fork and the cries of the wrong cup for milk I had an insight - IS THIS WHAT WE ALL SOUND LIKE TO GOD?
God calls us to a relationship and yet instead we often treat God just like young children treat their parents, a complaint board with a long list of needs! Sure we love him, but this is a relationship of lots of expectations and taking. We might come to God as little children, but truly our relationship with the Divine needs to evolve beyond this. As Parents and children our relationships grow and change. My relationship with my mother is much different then it was when I was my children's age and I am happy for that. I cherish our close relationship and the give and take that comes from it. And isn't that the intimate relationship our Creator is expecting of us? Not a relationship in which we demand, whine and lash out in anger.
But it is harder to live into that relationship - first because it requires work and second because it carries with it accountability.
Let's challenge ourselves, next time our prayer sounds like a whine to change from the whine of life to the love of God. Let us encourage a relationship in which God's will is not consistently being over-run by the whine of life, thus drowning out God's will for our own demands.
