Come Up Higher

This morning I woke up and came down stairs and was immediately hit with the disaster that is my house. I made my coffee and surveyed the mess. I wasn't feeling great last night so ended up walking out of my kitchen after dinner and just turning the light off instead of cleaning up. Sipping my coffee, I dodged toys, books, pillows, and blankets on my way to the couch. I looked up and saw my dust covered book shelves, unorganized nick knacks strewn about from a wild game of football yesterday. I got up and opened the curtains in front of my back door to look out into the back yard. The worship song I was listening to was about the Creator so I thought it would be nice to look out at creation but all I could see was my disaster of a back yard. Green Pool, discarded lunch dishes on the back porch, toys scattered throughout the yard, popcycle wrappers, grass that needs mowed, chores that need done in my garden...*sigh* the list goes on.

I sat back down, trying to listen to the worship music and concentrate on meeting with the Father. But all I could think about was what a giant failure of a wife, mother, and homemaker I was. Silently running through the ginormous list of chores that needed to be done and berating myself for slacking off and letting everyone else slack off all weekend. Out of no where the Lord invades my thoughts saying, "I have so much more."

This was a startling thought. So much more what? But in my heart I knew exactly what He was talking about. This may be shocking to some but the truth is my disaster of a house and lax cleaning skills are pretty low on His radar. Like pretty much non existent. What's important to Him? What "more" could He be talking about?

I have a very limited amount of alone time available to spend with the Father. Very limited. So here I was feeling awful about myself and wasting time with Him. And please don't misunderstand. The Lord doesn't trivialize our thoughts, feelings, concerns, or worries. He cares, genuinely cares about what we care about no matter how big or how small. But our worries are NOT His worries. Does He care about cleanliness, self control, holiness, and stewardship? Absolutely. But He has so much more for us then worrying about those things!

So my challenge for today is to come up higher, to pursue Him through my everyday tasks; to see myself the way He sees me. I am His child, His creation and obviously He trusts me enough to give me my house, my children and frankly I think He thinks I'm doing a fabulous job!

Maybe you're not a stay at home mom like me and these are not your issues. The point is, if for any reason you feel like you've failed, or the tediousness of this life is getting to you, if anything starts to cloud your vision of what really matters let me encourage you today by saying, "Come up higher, there is so much more." Set your sights on things eternal. If it's not going to be here a gazillion years from now don't worry about it! If you have eternal lives under your care, they are the ones who deserve your attention. Your relationships with the Father and with those in your life are what's important, so let the weight and the burdens of the temporal things fall today. He has so much more in store.