It is always a challenge for Kathy and me to live out our faith in front of our children. While others might be fooled by a veneer of spirituality, our children see us at our least pious moments. This year, in an attempt to model the virtues of ministry and service, we volunteered to work as leaders in our church’s AWANA program. As it happened, Joshua and Daniel were already serving in AWANA, and Rachel had done so in years past. David and Sarah are participants in the program. We’ve been looking for opportunities to minister together as a family – this seemed tailor-made to lend our support and endorse it by our presence.

Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed … but maybe some of ‘em aren’t fully Approved, yet?

We’re about half-way through the year, and it has not been easy. While many kids enter into the program whole-heartedly, some are interested only in the games, and endure ‘Verse Time’ and ‘Council Time’ with ill-concealed boredom. And yet, there are moments of tenderness and glory when the gospel message connects with the hearts of the children, some of whose lives are being transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Being an AWANA leader can be pretty challenging.

During ‘Verse Time’ the kids are supposed to recite verses that they’ve memorized during the week, progressing through numbered sections in their workbooks. It is hard for the kids (and, if they’re anything like us, their parents) to remember to work on their books during the week, and so ‘Verse Time’ is sometimes less productive than we would like. In an attempt to motivate the kids, our fearless AWANA commander offered the kids a deal:

“If you finish a book (8 ‘Discoveries’, or chapters of 7 sections each),” he told them, “you will get an opportunity to throw a whipped-cream pie in the face of one of the leaders.”

Thank goodness there were only two cans of whipped cream available.

This deal was received with glee on the part of the kids, but I wasn’t worried. While several of the boys in my group are making good progress in their workbooks, I’ve been subtly suggesting to the boys in my group that Tom, my co-leader, would make a better target for a pie. “After all,” I reminded them, “he sometimes wears a beard, which would be much harder to clean after a good pie-ing.”

Little did I know, that one of my ‘friends’ at our church was hatching a plot against me, using his own children as instruments of evil.

Many people think that this man (we’ll call him Jekyll, after Robert Louis Stevenson’s story) is godly, upright, and worthy of honor. After all, he serves as an elder in our church, leads a small group Bible study, and also holds the position of Treasurer. His children are sweet and well-behaved (or so I always thought), and his wife is a kind and gentle saint. He often teaches classes and serves communion, and is one of the few men in our church who wears a tie.

Not my actual ‘friend’.

Of course, I’ve had the advantage of seeing him operate behind closed doors. A person with my unique insight could suggest that he is a tight-fisted skinflint; a man who snatches cookies out of the mouths of widows and orphans, a man who must be opposed on nearly every major policy decision of the church. In many ways, he might be better likened to the brutal Mr. Hyde.

I barely had time to close my eyes …

I felt a tingling of impending doom, when little Zachary was asked, “Who do you choose as your target, for a pie in the face?”

“I want Mr. Tim,” the six-year-old boldly asserted.

I was stunned. Zachary isn’t even in my group (I am a leader for older boys). I had assumed that he would pick one of his own leaders, or, perhaps the AWANA commander himself. What could possibly motivate him to seek me out for this vicious attack?

The truth was soon revealed: “My Dad will pay him $5 to get you with a pie,” his sister (Angie) confided, hopping up and down in glee.

I remembered a recent debate among the church elders, in which Dr. Jekyll was narrowly defeated. He wanted to install parking meters in the church’s lot, and to drive around in a little cart between services, ticketing those who overstayed their time.

“Those people are wasting valuable parking spaces, chatting it up in the lobby! We’ve got to move ‘em in and move ‘em out!” he shouted, pounding his fist on the table, veins popping out on his flushed face.

Personally, I rather think he wanted to see the sad faces of the children as he towed their parents’ cars away. As I often do, I opposed him in this vile scheme, and now I discovered I was not immune from the consequences of that action.

Dr. Jekyll had put a lot of work into the Powerpoint presentation for the elder board … obviously not a man to thwart lightly.

Little Zachary soon revealed the influence of his father’s character, as I reluctantly filled the pie-pan with whipped cream.

“More whipped cream,” he told me, stone-faced, eyes glittering in unholy anticipation.

My pleas for mercy were ruthlessly ignored as he pressed the pie firmly into my face. Just as his father would twist a knife in my back, Zachary rotated the pie with his wrist to ensure that the cream would go up my nose and into my eyes. After what seemed like hours, he finally released the pie pan so I could gasp for breath.

Maybe I should have taken out my contact lenses … ?

In many ways, this simply underscores the need for an AWANA program in our church. We must always be vigilant against the influence of the world. Venality and corruption among the children of leaders is of particular concern.

Little Zachary (aka “The Tim Slayer”) doesn’t even look sorry …

I fired off an e-mail to my so-called ‘friend’, the next day.

“So, when is the next time you’ll be teaching Sunday School for second, third, seventh, eighth or tenth-graders?” I asked him, innocently.

Coincidentally, those are the ages of my children, who have already expressed their willingness to be bribed, some of them offering two-for-one specials.

Revenge, as they say, is a dessert best served cold.

Tim

Recently I had the opportunity to celebrate my forty-fourth birthday, which seemed appropriate, since I am, in fact, forty-four. As is my custom whenever it falls on a weekday, I took the day off from work.

The day I turned seventeen, I was working at the local Holiday Inn as a bell-boy, where I had served for more than two years. Mostly, I performed the duties of a front desk clerk, but the crafty management paid me $3.25/hour as a bell-boy since I was so young (and looked even younger). At about 9:00 in the evening of my birthday, I found myself dissatisfied with the prospect of working on such a momentous day, and I resolved, forthwith, to resign. Half an hour later, I was unemployed, with more than $2000 in savings and my evenings suddenly free. Four months later, I was penniless, and forced to seek work as a fishmonger’s assistant. But that is another story.

My actual former workplace, no longer a Holiday Inn.

Since then, whenever I enjoy my job, I’m careful to take my birthday off, for fear that history may repeat itself. It would be a shame if I impulsively decided to quit, as a result of being forced to work on my birthday. And so, I found myself home on a Thursday, with the whole day stretching before me, full of promise and opportunity.

In July, we took up geocaching as a hobby, and continue to derive much enjoyment from this pastime. As a family, we’ve located more than 50 caches, and find ourselves ranging further and further afield for new challenges. On my birthday, while Kathy drove Joshua to his JNROTC class, I mobilized the rest of the kids to pack lunches. We piled into the van and got an early (11 am) start, once they returned.

The kids enjoy taking (and leaving) trinkets in some of the larger caches.

I loaded a chain of geocache coordinates into our GPS receiver, each 10-20 minutes apart, with the furthest about 90 minutes from our home, among the foothills of Mount Rainier. Bypassing the first one (there was no easy place to stop on the highway as we hurtled past), we came to the vicinity of the second cache, which we eventually located. It was concealed in a narrow crevice between an electrical utility box and the pole to which it was attached.

“Careful, kids, that’s 220 volts,” I cautioned, standing well back.

Geocaching is not a particularly dangerous sport, but it does take you into some strange places. Joshua found the cache (a micro, about the size of a dry-erase marker) and noted the additional hazard of a bee’s nest, just above the cache.

No bees were harmed in the filming of this adventure.

After signing the log, I graciously allowed Joshua to replace it (usually a much-sought-after privilege), but for some reason he was less-than-excited:

“Thanks, Dad,” he sourly grumbled. “How great that I get to be the one stung by high-voltage bees.”

There’s just no pleasing some people.

Sarah found this particularly-difficult cache hidden among the trestles of the bridge.

Eventually we found seven caches and discovered many scenic locales, including:

• a geocache container disguised as an electrical transformer
• an elaborate porta-potty enclosure
• a railroad bridge with a bunch of dead salmon
• a deep river gorge, spanned by a one-lane bridge
• a monument for miners, killed in a series of mine disasters
• an abandoned stone building, nearly overrun by forest growth

Sarah and Rachel didn’t seem to appreciate the odor or lack of toilet paper.

This bridge shook especially hard when a logging truck passed by …

It was a delightful day; warm, sunny, and almost cloudless. I spent it just the way I wanted, with the people I love best, laughing and exploring and enjoying each other. With a birthday like that, I can hardly wait to turn 45!

David sure does love his Mama.

Kathy and I have been married for 17.5 years, now, happier every year.

– Tim

I had Labor Day off from work, and so I took the children away on a day-trip so that Kathy could enjoy a badly-needed Teacher Work Day. We hadn’t yet formally started school, and Kathy had been struggling to put together schedules and lesson plans for all five.

When I was employed at Amazon, I enjoyed a four-day work-week, with Mondays off. I used to take the kids away for the day, on some adventure or other, and let Kathy stay home. She is with the kids nearly all the time, as mother and teacher. I joke that we need to give her some ‘down time’ or we’ll end up checking her into the Whispering Pines Clinic for Homeschooling Moms, an imaginary treatment center for teaching moms who experience nervous breakdowns.

Maybe it isn’t quite as imaginary as I thought.

My parents hosted a Pastor’s Retreat at the Refuge, and so on the Sunday afternoon before Labor Day I loaned them Joshua as a Gibeonite (a hewer of wood and drawer of water) to help set up for the event. The other four and I followed Monday morning, so that I could serve as a photographer and the younger kids could help out as needed.

There were about 25 pastors and their wives in attendance at this year’s conference.

Some Dads dread a day with their children, but not me; my children are a lot of fun to be around. Everyone seemed cheerful as we set off; the younger three read books quietly in the back of the van while Rachel and I chatted companionably in the front.

Setting up for lunch

At the Retreat center, the kids helped out while I snapped pictures, and then waited patiently for everyone to be served before sampling the lunch buffet.

The Refuge Dining Room

After helping to move all the chairs back to the meeting room (there was such a large crowd that we needed to use the meeting-room chairs for dining) the younger four and I went geocaching, while Joshua stayed to enjoy the second half of the Pastor’s conference. In spite of the rain, we tramped up and down the coast of the Hood Canal and found all six of our intended caches.

A typical geocache is found in an old ammunition box, often hidden in a dead log.

Daniel, my middle boy, felt that he was badly treated by his siblings at one of the caches, and was inclined to sulk. “I’ll just sit in the car, then,” he told me grumpily. Such incidents often spiral downward with Daniel, so I braced myself for a long afternoon of rebukes and punishments; but God had more cheerful plans. I was pleasantly surprised to see Daniel reverse course quickly and snap out of his selfishness, kindly offering treats from his backpack to the others and working hard to engage them in smiling conversation. I was proud of him for the effort he took to restore his relationship with his siblings.

Some geocaches are much smaller, like this one (the size of a pill bottle)

We returned in time to sample the dessert buffet.

“How do you do that?” Joshua asked me. “You arrive just as the line clears, but before all the dessert is gone. You must teach me this.”

I smiled mysteriously – I don’t tell all of my secrets.

My parents were tired after the guests departed, and it seemed that we would be more trouble than we were worth, so we didn’t stay to help clean up.

We did manage to score some leftovers, though.

Worried that we might return home before Kathy was quite ready for us, and wanting Joshua to get some after-dark driving experience, I decided to stop off in Shelton. “We’re here to stall,” I told the kids, in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

Usually we are quite anxious to get home, but for some reason, everyone seemed to accept this cheerfully. “I really want Mom to finish my chart,” Rachel insisted, “so we should take our time.” We wandered the aisles of Wal-Mart and managed to find one or two things that we hadn’t realized we ‘needed’. No one (except Sarah) seemed to want to eat at McDonalds, so we jumped back into the van and I cruised the shopping center for an alternative.

We’re pretty frugal about some things, and so we don’t eat out at restaurants very much. I spotted a Godfather’s Pizza and hustled the kids inside to enjoy the all-you-can-eat buffet, much to their surprise and delight. “You have been hiding this place from me,” my oldest son reproved, eyeing the pizza hungrily.

Not our actual Godfather’s Pizza restaurant.

One of the cool things about parenting is that your children often reflect facets of the two people you love best in the world: yourself, and your spouse. I was very impressed to see all five of my children hit the salad bar first, and only then did they sample the pizza selections. Kathy has been an excellent role model in healthy eating, these past five years. They took after me in terms of the quantity of pizza that was consumed.

Having the dining area to ourselves, I asked to have the big TV turned off, and we laughed and told stories and carried on as though we were at home in our own kitchen. We played the “What are you thankful for?” game, always one of my favorites at meal times. Eventually the buffet closed, and we reluctantly tore ourselves away and staggered to the van.

Joshua drove us home, contravening all custom and common practice by staying in one lane and observing the speed limit, much to the consternation of the other drivers. I reflected on the cheerfulness of the day, and how devoid it had been of bickering, selfishness and mean words.

Laughter, yes; mean words, no.

How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity! — Psalm 133:1

My heart was full of joy and pride, thinking of the grace, kindness and positive leadership that my children had shown to the retreat participants and to each other.

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. — 3 John 4

Tim

Last week my wife invited some guests over to our house, and introduced me to her friend’s husband. “Mike, here, is into geocaching,” she bubbled. Latte seems to take great joy in widening my social horizons.

“That’s great,” I nodded approvingly. “International finance is a challenging field, but I’ll bet it pays for itself, eh?” I chuckled into my Diet Coke. Mike looked blankly nervous, and I mentally revised my impression of him downward. Some of these financial-type guys don’t have very good social skills.

Mike and I pose for an obligatory ‘husbands’ shot

Later, for no apparent reason, Mike led me around the yard, with some kind of compass that looked like a walkie-talkie. “I’ve hidden items at coordinates around your property; now you try to find them,” he confided, raising his eyebrows conspiratorially.

“Really?” I was somewhat surprised. I didn’t know Mike very well – heck, I hadn’t yet worked up to asking him for a loan, let alone a gift. “I guess our wives ARE pretty good friends,” I mused. “What kind of items, Krugeraands or precious gems?”

Mike tried to conceal his embarrassment beneath a veneer of bafflement. “Look, just try to find the cache, will you?”

“Better and better,” I thought. Cash is so much easier to handle — I wouldn’t know how to sell the Krugeraands, anyway.

We stopped to take a group-family-picture. We and another family graciously loaned Mike and De’Etta some of our children, since they have such a small family.

I wandered aimlessly around the back yard, peering under likely bushes, until Mike was overcome by impatience. “Look,” he growled, tapping his finger peremptorily on the screen of the walkie-talkie device he had given me. “You head toward wherever the compass arrow points, and you stop and search when it says you’re within 20 feet.”

I was offended. “You act as though I’ve never done this before,” I scolded. “Now, remind me: why, exactly, does this long line come together with these other two angled shorter lines? And what does ‘N’ stand for, anyway?” I indicated the small screen on the walkie-talkie, filled with incomprehensible numbers and symbols.

I wasn’t the only one who had trouble reading the GPS device.

By dint of elimination of all possible concealment, I eventually found the first ‘hidden item’, a plastic dinosaur tucked under the deck of my hot tub. I shook it hopefully, but no gems spilled out of its toothy mouth. “Heh, heh. One of the kids must’ve left this here,” I said, hopefully.

“No, that’s it — now on to the next one!” enthused Mike. He pushed a few buttons on the yellow device and handed it back to me. “Try to find the second one — I had a lot of fun hiding it. Har, har, har.”

Not our actual back yard.

As the sun went behind the trees, I sadly concluded that Mike was a raving lunatic. How else could a grown man take such delight in ‘finding’ so-called ‘treasures’ he had hidden himself only a few hours before, with the help of a mechanical device of dubious utility?

I tried to tactfully extricate myself, well aware that any remark, seeming to challenge his delusion, might cause him to turn violent. “You know,” I wheedled, “we could save quite a bit of time if you would just tell me where the last one is hidden, heh, heh.” I grinned nervously, while frantically signaling to my wife behind my back.

Latte was maliciously oblivious to my plight. “Would you like to stay for dinner?” she asked Mike’s family, sweetly. Mike seemed to be doing something frantic with his hands, behind his back, but I was too polite to notice.

Thistle opens a cache …

Coincidentally, Mike and his family were not able to stay for dinner, but were seized with an urgent need to decamp. We were left standing on the front lawn with the squeal of their 15-passenger van tires ringing in our ears. That evening I spent some research time on the internet, mainly to determine whether mental conditions (like those exhibited by Mike) were in any way contagious.

As I later deduced, Mike was trying to introduce me to a new outdoor ‘sport’ combining the least enjoyable parts of hiking and orienteering with treasure-hunting, only without the treasure (or the pirates). Using devices attuned to Global Positioning satellites, it is apparently possible to arrive within 15 or 20 feet of a predefined hide-site, or ‘cache’, given a set of coordinates and one of those fancy-schmancy GPS ‘navigator’ devices.

Rhubarb hones his mystical eastern martial art skillz, to assist in locating a cache.

“Humph,” I humphed. “I’ll bet that GPS thingy he tried to pass off on me was defective. I’d better buy my own.” Furtively, I ordered the cheapest one I could find that looked cooler than Mike’s. “Mine has a high-resolution color screen,” I gloated, quickly closing the Amazon order-confirmation page in my browser before Latte could catch me in the act.

“What did you just order?” she intoned, suspiciously. Latte is always jumping to conclusions; one of these days she’ll jump to the wrong one, and then I’ll show no mercy.

“Just a little GPS thingy,” I told her airily, as an adept of deep mysteries addresses a novice. “I’ve decided to take up geostashing. The brochure says it will promote health and family bonding and what-not.” I showed her the glowing picture of a stalwart, muscular father, boldly leading a passel of clear-eyed, smiling children up a precipitous mountain ridge, GPS thingy in-hand. “I’ll bet I can geobash better than any old international finance guy,” I told her, confidently.

My actual GPS thingy

“You could definitely use the exercise,” Latte chortled, slapping my belly off-handedly, producing a sound like a carpet-cleaner beating out a rug with one of those big wooden paddles. “But where can you rent kids like that?”

Although we rarely agree in such matters, Latte had a point. I mentally compared my own children with those in the brochure. My three boys (Faramir, Weasel and Rhubarb), though physically impressive enough, were better-known for being squint-eyed and surly, at least whenever their fingers were pried away from their computer game controllers. My girls (Foxglove and Thistle) are outwardly attractive enough, but both take after their mother in sniggering and snide remarks. I could just imagine how harried the Dad in the brochure picture would look, if he was constantly badgered the way that I am:

“Say, Dad,” one of them would sneer,” since when does the sun set in the East?”

I turned my attention back to Latte. “Maybe I could train ‘em, you know, build some character into the little rascals, like you’re always saying I should.” Latte looked doubtful, but I crushed my misgivings. After all, I’d already ordered the GPS thingy, so there was no going back.

Eventually, my Garmin eTrex Venture HC GPS Navigator ™ came in the mail, and it was every bit as wonderful as I had hoped. I tried to distract my wife from the price tag. “Notice how mine has a high-resolution color screen, and is substantially nicer than Mike’s?”

Latte squinted hopefully. “Does it have the locations of all 16,120 Starbucks stores world-wide, pre-programmed?”

Once we established that the device did not, in fact, have any coffee bistros pre-loaded (not even a Forza), my wife concealed her breathless excitement by carelessly tossing it over her shoulder onto the couch. “Whatever,” she fleered.

The following Saturday dawned bright and clear, and I gathered the kids to form a geognashing party. “Now, look,” I told them sternly, hitching up my shorts. “We’re doing this as a family, and I expect everyone to be kind, take turns, share the GPS thingy, and not rush to be first all the time. It will probably involve a good bit of walking around in the woods, so bring some water and wear solid shoes and long pants.” I adjusted my flip-flops self-consciously.

The mighty hunters boldly set forth …

We drove around for quite a while, trying to get near the coordinates I had painstakingly entered into the GPS thingy. People having rudely built their houses in our way, we were forced to circle the neighborhood, seeking an access path. As always, the kids admired my driving and navigational skills.

“Say, Dad, that’s the fourth time we’ve turned down this street. Maybe you could try a left at this next road, before we stop for lunch?”

We eventually found a path into the park, and descended into a green, leafy ravine; an unsuspected natural haven lurking behind rows of suburban houses.

You would think that a treasure hunt with a technological twist would be fun for the whole family, but we were plagued with such incessant whining and unbridled selfishness, that it threatened to spoil the entire outing for everyone. One person, in particular, was a veritable fountain of complaints.

“I’m hot, I’m thirsty, I got a scratch from some blackberries, and my feet are tired.”

“I think it is my turn to hold the GPS thingy, and I’m tired of carrying this plastic toy!”

“How much farther does it say it is?”

“Only 482 feet, Dad,” Foxglove tried to reassure me. “We’ve come so far, more than 100 feet from the car already, isn’t that encouraging?”

See, I did let others hold the GPS at least some of the time.

I decided to keep a stiff upper lip, as a good example to the children. Calling for them to assemble around me, I gave a stirring and inspirational lecture on the merits of bearing hardship with patience and stoic courage.

“Thanks, Dad — that was very stirring and inspirational.” Weasel soothed. “How ‘bout you keep a stiff upper lip in the car, while we hike over to the cache?”

Eventually we located and opened four such caches in succession; in a spurt of generosity, I even let the kids find one of them. We swapped the worthless plastic trinkets we had brought in our pockets for worthless plastic trinkets left by other geocache enthusiasts. I began to suspect that the entire ‘sport’ had originated as a clever ploy to dispose of unwanted Happy Meal ™ toys.

One cache was reptile themed, so we brought tiny plastic dinosaurs to leave for the next ‘lucky’ group.

As I sat at home that evening, pouring hydrogen peroxide on my bramble-wounds, I realized that I had actually enjoyed myself, and burned a few calories to boot. The children proudly showed off their ‘prizes’ to Latte, and I spent some time online, bragging about the caches we had found. No longer did our user name on the geocaching.com website have that shameful “(0 found)” label beside it – we had begun to be ‘players’ in the international community of geohashing.

Some of the caches (like this one that Weasel tracked down) were very small and consisted only of a rolled-up log …

I went over to my friend’s house and hammered on the front door. It opened, warily. “Hey, Dave, guess what? I’ve become a geotrasher!” I brandished my GPS thingy.

Dave tried to slam the door in my face, but I deftly blocked it with my foot, causing it to rebound painfully into his chest. Dave always enjoys my visits, but sometimes his clowning is a bit tiresome. Pressing the GPS device into his hand, I pushed past him and settled comfortably into his recliner, grabbing the remote. “I’ve hidden items at coordinates around your property, now you try to find them!”

Special thanks to Pat McManus, whose memorable style inspired this story.

[Editor’s note: I wrote this post in April, but for some reason never published it. Blog posts that are written, but not published, often seem to block me from further creative thought. I’ve had a long drought of creativity, so I decided to go ahead and post this one.]

On Wednesday, I read my daily Bible selection, following the through-the-Bible-in-a-year schedule as set out by the good folks at One Year Bible.

Not my actual Bible. I use the online version, usually NIV or some other

I came across a passage in Luke that warns against complacency among believers, and encourages faithful servants of the Master to be ready for His return. I had tended to interpret this as referring primarily to the Second Coming, the time when Jesus returns in majesty, glory and power to claim His own.

One of the really cool things about reading the Bible is that, because it is the very inspired living Word of God, the Holy Spirit is able to interpret it to the heart of man in new and fuller ways, the more it is read and studied. This time when I read it, I thought in terms of the smaller ‘returns’ of the Master, as He calls to me in my day-to-day life:

“Be dressed for service and keep your lamps burning, as though you were waiting for your master to return from the wedding feast. Then you will be ready to open the door and let him in the moment he arrives and knocks. The servants who are ready and waiting for his return will be rewarded. I tell you the truth, he himself will seat them, put on an apron, and serve them as they sit and eat! He may come in the middle of the night or just before dawn. But whenever he comes, he will reward the servants who are ready.” — Luke 12:35-38

Many non-believers play a deadly sort of game with God, knowing that He exists, but delaying their recognition of Him in their lives. “I’ll get right with God when I’m done with the ‘me’ phase of my life,” they tell themselves, not realizing that they are hardening their hearts against God’s influence, painting themselves into a corner where they cannot respond to His love, more surely than Ebenezer Scrooge forged his chains of greed. When the end of their life comes, often unexpectedly, they find that they never quite made the time or opportunity to turn their hearts to God, and so they spend eternity, separated from Him and all of His glory.

I think it is possible even for a Christian to play a variant of this game. “I’ll become a fully devoted follower of Jesus once I take care of [insert excuse here]”. It may be a job, wealth, family, marital status, schooling, personal entertainment or any other thing that I put ahead of the call of the Master in my life. And so they go on with their lives, not responding to the Master’s call in their daily walk with Him.

“But what if the servant thinks, ‘My master won’t be back for a while,’ and he begins beating the other servants, partying, and getting drunk? The master will return unannounced and unexpected, and he will cut the servant in pieces and banish him with the unfaithful.” — Luke 12:45-46

Surprise, surprise, at some point the Master will return in glory, and mete out rewards and punishments as promised. But along the way, there are also many rewards to be had, for those servants who are faithful to obey His voice.

I haven’t been sleeping very well of late, because of my allergies – averaging about 5 hours of sleep a night. When I finally saw an allergist on Monday, he gave me a steroid that almost entirely dealt with my symptoms, but (ironically) prevented me from sleeping the first night I took it. On Tuesday I fired off a note to the men I pray with on Wednesday mornings, telling them I may take a ‘pass’ if I was unable to get to sleep early Tuesday night. But before I slept that night, I asked God to wake me if He wanted me there. Then I carefully turned OFF my alarm.

About 25 minutes before we usually meet, Kathy woke up and went to the bathroom, waking me when she came back to bed. I looked at the clock, and realized that, if I took a quick shower and hustled, I could make it on time. Part of me wanted to go back to sleep, but a louder part of me remembered the prayer the night before.

“The Master is calling,“ I reminded myself; and so I got up, grumbling: “… but does He have to call ‘just before dawn’, just to fulfill the Scriptures?”

I’m not very gracious in my thoughts, early mornings.

As it turns out, it was important that I was there to pray, and my presence there opened up several other ways for me to serve. More and more I find myself listening for the voice of my King, and eagerly wanting to please Him, to demonstrate to Him that I am a good servant, not beating the other servants or getting drunk while ‘waiting’ for Him to return.

I was talking yesterday evening with a dear brother, about motivation in pleasing God. “Is it right to be motivated by a desire for reward, when obeying God?” he asked. Christians sometimes get caught up on this kind of thing, wanting to serve with the purest of motives, but not knowing how to get to that point.

“Well, God set up the whole idea of rewards for good service,” I told him. “I don’t think He has any illusions about our motives, and He doesn’t seem to have a problem with our mercenary greed, at least when it is put to His service.” I paused reflectively.

“In my life, I’ve found that the more I serve, the purer my motives become. Even when I start out obeying out of obligation, duty or even fear, I find (if I keep obeying) that my motives begin to joyfully skew toward obedience out of love.”

I’m sure I wasn’t quite that articulate, but, hey, this is my blog, and I can quote myself however I like. I went on at some length, trying to paint a picture of someone who starts out at Duty, and arrives at Love. Most people can identify with this at some level – parenting an infant is like that, or working at a new job (if it is a good one).

Every day that I go in to ‘the city’ to work, I drive past one of the ubiquitous coffee stands that infest our town. This particular one advertises, in a garish pink sign, ‘Bikini Barrista Babes’, and its chain has been featured in local news stories for the scanty nature of the ‘bikinis’. Every day I want to look over as I drive past and check out the girls who serve the coffee. It is a dangerous stretch of road, frankly, not the least because of that visual distraction.

At first, I didn’t look out of duty and obligation. How could I expect to be a worthy instrument of God’s grace if I disobeyed such a simple instruction, so early in the day?

“But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” — Matthew 5:28

“You shall not commit adultery.” — Exodus 20:14

It doesn’t get much plainer than that, I’m afraid. It is clearly not God’s intent for a man to lust after a woman who is not his wife.

This morning I was thinking about my heart motivations, and I realized that I was able to keep my eyes on the road, not begrudging the duty, but out of joy. “I make a covenant with my eyes not to lust after strange women,” I reminded myself, “because I love my Lord and want to please Him.”

“Women who wear bikinis at 5 in the morning to serve coffee are definitely strange,” I mused.

I’m sure my motivations will not always be good and pure, but I find that I am able to get to that point more and more as I practice obedience.

Still, it would be nice if the Master would return in mid-afternoon, when it is convenient for me.

Tim