Grooming my Heart

James 1:22-24 (New International Version)

 ²²Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. ²³Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror ²⁴and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.

I am not overly vain about my appearance.  I do like to look as nice as possible, but   don’t spend a lot of time getting ready for my day.   And if I had to, I would be okay with going without make-up or wearing something wrinkled.  The one thing I am vain about though, is my hair.  So when a while back I sleepily turned on the shower as I did every morning, but unlike every other morning, no water came out of the showerhead, I panicked. I checked the other faucets and found them to be just as dry.  I heard noises outside and went out the front door to see work trucks working on a broken pipe a few houses down.  After speaking to workman (reluctantly as my hair was a disaster!),  I found out the water would not be restored for at least 3 hours.  I had to leave for work in an hour.   How could I go to work with unwashed hair?  Well, the answer is, I wouldn’t. I absolutely refuse to appear in public with my hair in disarray.  I  would absolutely never look in a mirror, see that my hair was messed up, and go about my day forgetting that I had not styled my hair.   At times, I have been embarrassed  after I have looked in a mirror and realized that I had spent much of my day with my hair out of sorts and not even realized it.  I must confess, that standing in the waterless shower, my first thought was that if I could not wash my hair, I was going to have to call in sick to work.

If only I felt that way about my heart.   In this area, I find I am the person James is referring to  in James 1:22-24.  I often go to church, hear a message that convicts me to the core of my soul, and then walk away from that experience and promptly forget about it as I go about my busy week.  I can hear something in a song on the Christian radio station I listen to, be touched by it, but as soon as I am out of my car where I was listening, I am no different.   If I became as upset about my messed up heart as I did my messed up hair, I would be ashamed to go into public until I got myself right.  If I were as concerned about my relationship with Jesus as I were about making sure my hair looked right, I would be spending much more time  in the Word and in Prayer than I would with my blow dryer in front of the mirror. 

If I worked on my heart issues like I did my hair issues, I would be a doer of the Word.  Instead, I deceive myself into believing that everything is ok and I don’t need to do anything about my relationship with Christ by not looking into the “mirror” of His Word at all.

I style my hair in the morning so that I can maximize its potential.  I use products and tools to bring out the best in my hair.  I make sure before I leave the house, that it looks the best it can and I double check it before I am on my way for any strays out of place.  That morning, that my water was turned off, I found a small amount of water in a pitcher in the refrigerator.  It didn’t matter that it was quite cold, I was willing to go through a little discomfort in order to get my hair into an acceptable do.  I need to do the same with my heart.  I need to use the tools  and products available to me to maximize my potential for Christ.  His word, prayer, church, Christian friends, all can help me be the best I can be for Jesus. 

Today,   I am looking into my spiritual mirror, but instead of walking away and forgetting the condition of my heart, I am going to do something about it. I am going to look at the reflection of my heart and ask God to start transforming it into something  that reflects Him.

James 1:25 tells me that if I do something about it, God will bless me for it.  He will bless you too.

humility can be learned in the church parking lot

So I was in church this weekend, listening as my pastor gave a sermon partly about having a hungry, humble heart. At the end of the service, I prayed for God to make me hungry for him and also to bring humility into my life. My husband and I had arrived at church separately so I said I’d see him at home as we to separated in the lobby to head to our respective corners of the church parking lot. I walked briskly. The air was chilly plus I was supposed to be meeting my parents at my house and was concerned that they would arrive before I did. I was thinking about this when before I knew it, I was on the ground. I had stepped on a rock which threw me off balance and had me tumbling to the ground, my Bible, phone, keys and purse flying from me as I fell. Two women walking ahead of me must have heard me fall. I don’t’ think I cried out, but the sound of me slapping the concrete with the side of my body must have travelled to their ears even in the midst of the conversation they were having with each other. They backtracked to me asking if I was okay, was I hurt. I replied I was fine as I picked myself off of the ground as modestly as I could in a short, strait skirt. One woman picked up my things while the other one wipe dirt off my arm and told me not to be embarrassed.
“I’m not embarrassed,” I told her, “This happens to me all too often for me to get embarrassed anymore.” It was true. I am clumsy and fall down often. I probably should have been embarrassed that two strange ladies, and probably a few other people, saw me splayed undignified on the parking lot tarmac of my church. But it was just too common of an occurrence for me to waste energy being embarrassed about it.
One of the ladies shared a funny story of herself sifting through a clothing rack in Dillard’s and without warning, falling to the ground. She had no explanation for why she had fallen but it was something she had found so funny that her laughing drew the attention of the elderly lady employee nearby who asked if she needed an ambulance all while this woman’s husband looked on shaking his head.
In the parking lot, I laughed with her, a feeling of kinship passed between us. I thanked the ladies for their concern and continued to my car, realizing how quickly God answered my prayer for humility in my life. The irony made me smile as there have been so many other prayers I have prayed that would have made me come out looking so much more poised that God has yet to answer for me. Maybe a prayer for more humility is a favorite of God’s so He moves those to the top of his list. Whatever reason, I am thankful-I really am- that He saw fit to allow me to unceremoniously fall to the ground near those ladies. Why? Because of what God was teaching me. The lady that shared the story about her fall in Dillard’s, also said something that stuck with me. She said, “You are not alone, we all do it.” She meant, of course, that for some reason and to the chagrin of our male counterparts, we women seem to trip and fall many times over the course of our lives and often with very small objects like an uneven pavement or a rock as the cause. But I also took her statement as God reminding me that we all fall in life. At some point in our lives, because we are all messed up with sin, we all find ourselves in some undignified position or another in front of other people. Many people pretend they don’t see, but many others like these ladies, take time to turn away from their paths, come to where we’ve fallen, and without judgment dust us off and help us pick ourselves back up. By the way, humility and humiliation are different, though. God isn’t trying to belittle me and make me feel worthless. Instead is He is trying to remind me that I am not perfect and that I can’t make it through this life all alone. Humility allows us, sometimes forces us, to rely on others for help when we otherwise might not. A lesson I needed as I am terribly independent not wanting to rely on others or feel obligated to them in any way. As always, my life is a work in progress. A week from now, someone may try to help me out and I don’t accept because I completely forgot what God taught me when I fell in the parking lot at church. Hopefully though, there will be times I remember. And with God’s help, if I remember often enough, it will be one more small part of my life that is transformed.