The music started playing, and I smacked the snooze button as if it had done something to personally offend me.
Hello Morning! You’re suppose to be my favorite, but starting you is always rough.
I was cold. The covers warm. My pillow was comfortable. I reached to turn on the light, but getting out of bed was still out of the question. Because I was too cold. An old college sweatshirt sat on the ground right next to me. The one I had on last night. I would have taken about 7 seconds to pick it up and put it on. I’d be warm again. But, no, instead, I huddled under the covers, smacking the snooze button at least twice more, taking almost a full 30 minutes longer to muster up the courage and energy to reach over the edge and grab sweatshirt waiting.
As I sat there, at 5-something in the morning, I had an internal debate with myself over whether or not to reach far enough out of bed to get my sweatshirt and whether or not to spend enough seconds out of the covers to pull it over my head. And as these rather silly mental games were played, Romans 7 came to mind.
Yes, Romans 7, specifically verses 15 and 16…
I don’t understand what I do. I don’t do what I want to do. Instead, I do what I hate to do. I do what I don’t want to do.
(Thanks, Paul, for the tongue twister.)
I struggle with this. A lot. A sermon heard recently talked about concentrating on how we are all not like Jesus but should be more like Jesus and the specifics that we can do about that distance today. It dawned on me as I nodded and smiled in agreement with such words that often times, I want to be/react/love like Jesus did. I know what those words and actions are supposed to be. But I fail to do them. I sit there in the cold, stuck in the cold, with an easy solution to the problem, waiting with an open invitation for participation.
20 years & 1000 words 