There are really only two kinds of people in the world.
The first are people who try and carry all of their groceries from their car to the kitchen in one swift trip, or those who take their time, know their limits and end up taking multiple trips ensuring that everything is put away safely.
A few years ago I was the former.
Upon moving to Grand Rapids, MI from Orlando, FL, we were staying in an apartment only a quarter of a mile from Sams Club. The convenience to massive amounts of food was probably not the best thing for someone who had a hard time saying no to a good deal and really cheap whole gallons of milk. Cheap milk was extremely seductive for a farm boy that grow up drinking fresh cow milk every day in Bumpville.
Upon one particular trip to Sam’s Club I decided to load up on milk since it was such an amazing deal. I bought a few others things and made my way home. As I began to plan to carry the groceries up the three flight of stairs into our apartment, I had a tough decision to make. Do I take a couple of trips up and down the three flight of stairs, or am I a real man and carry it all in one trip?
Well, as a real man, I decided to carry it all in one trip. I loaded up my arms with all of the groceries and the two gallons of milk in my right arm. Everything was going well until I came to our door, realizing that it was locked. Very carefully I pulled the keys out of my right pocket and then it happened.
Both gallons of milk dropped out of the grip of my right arm and exploded on the floor. This wouldn’t had been terrible except we were on the third floor and the stairs were built with deck board with quarter inch gaps in between boards. As I stood and listened to the milk drizzle from one platform to the next, I couldn’t believe what I had just done.
Thirty minutes later and about six towels soaked up by milk, I finally made it into the apartment.
They say, “Don’t cry over spilled milk.” But what if that spilled milk is scattered over three flights of stairs?
Lesson learned. I didn’t embrace my limits. I thought I could do it all.
And this is a huge problem in life and ministry. We don’t know and embrace our limits. We try and do it all. We take on stresses and responsibilities that the Spirit is not asking us to take on. This is how seductive the false self is. It will keep adding more and more to our plate and leave us staring down three floors of stairs with milk dripping everywhere. It will lead us to a place of rage where we do things that we can only stand there in embarrassment at what our false selves have done.
The real question is, what’s really going on underneath the surface of our lives where we feel like we need to do it all? For me, it’s a deep sense of narcissism or the longing to be separate (be my own god) that drives me to not embrace my limits. I falsely believe that I need to play the role of being a hero, and play Jesus in my own life and in the life of others.
The ironic thing is that Jesus, who is the savior of the world, wasn’t even trying to be the savior of everyone and every circumstance. Early on in Mark’s gospel it says in 1:35, “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”
Jesus embraced his limits and we are called to do the same. Embracing our limits allows us to then fully be the person God’s called us to be in the world, thus allowing us to love freely. This is the beauty of the Sabbath that God gives us. It slows us down for a whole day to breathe and to be reminded that redemption, ministry, life working is not up to us and our frantic activity.
Embrace your limits on the weekends or whenever you take a Sabbath and be reminded that in Christ, you are enough, you have nothing to prove to others or to the world, and this awareness allows us to then love others freely.