Hey Sunshines!
You know God can bring lessons during any moment, through anyone and by anything! My latest lesson came through the frying of a grilled cheese sandwich. Yep, I said it; grilled cheese sandwich! I had buttered the bread like I normally do and placed it in the cast iron skillet. At the same time, the phone rang and something the newscaster was saying on the television caught my attention. Innocently losing focus, I took my eyes off my original task and walked away. Have you ever walked away from something in your life that you should have stayed attentive to? What about the commitment you made in reading your Bibles more often or praying more fervently? How about when God entrusted you with starting a program to boost self-esteem or He assigned you to be a Big Brother mentor to guide young men on the right path? Whatever the task or assignment was, oftentimes in life, distractions can cause us to take our eyes off of what we are to be doing. Your cell phone ringing during the time you designated for studying. DISTRACTION. Your friends call and want to go to dinner but you have committed yourself to family time. DISTRACTION. You are right in the middle of writing your business plan then you get an overdue bill in the mail. DISTRACTION. You walk out on faith and start the non-profit that God has spoken in your ear then someone close to you becomes terminally ill. DISTRACTION! No matter how small something is or how justifiably large it is, if it causes you to lose focus and take your eyes off what God has instructed you to do it is a DISTRACTION. God is the author and the finisher so we must believe that He knew the distraction was coming before He made the assignment.
Getting back to the grilled cheese sandwich, in what only seemed like a few seconds, I began to smell the bread burning. “How could this be?” I asked myself, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that it had not been “that long”. So in my logic, I decided to ignore the smoke signals and the “don’t quite smell right” warning because I didn’t believe it was the right timing. I moved closer to the TV to see what was going on and I continued my phone conversation. A few minutes later when I thought the time was right, I flipped the sandwich over to toast the other side. What stared back at me was not appealing at all. It was burned, almost to a crisp but the cheese I saw oozing from the inside along with the golden brown slice of bread being perfectly fried on the other side, I couldn’t resist. I wanted to eat this sandwich and experience the inside. When I put it on my plate I placed it golden brown side up. I didn’t want to look at the burnt crisp side. It was unattractive and unappealing. I took my first bite and as you can imagine, it wasn’t quite as good. The mixing of burned bread and buttered golden brown bread didn’t taste all that great. I continued to eat anyway convincing myself that the good bread outweighed the taste of the bad bread.
So many times, we get distracted and ended up “half way” doing what God intended for us to. Just like the golden brown bread, we see “some good” in the assignment and try to pawn it off as the finished product. God says, not so! If we are to walk our fullness, we must realize that “half way” or even “3/4s of the way” won’t work. God desires and deserves our best as well as the lives that we are destined to touch desires and deserves that best from us. So the next time a DISTRACTION comes along, activate your power of faith and resilience to keep pressing through the fire so that you may partake in perfectly grilled cheese sandwich…well, let’s say in the work that God assigned for your life!
Until next time, remember to CREATE each day INTENTIONALLY GOOD and Be Beautifully Inspired!
Sincerely,
Schan
