Athletes are always wanting to be better, to swing better, catch the ball better, hit it straighter, whatever it is the athlete wants to always do more. In rural East Texas and I am sure everywhere else, this very common sense saying exists: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. That seems obvious but is it?
We are all like this you know, we just want a little more, to be a little better, to do something that “matters”, or make a little more money. Whatever it is, we always want a bit more. And then the day comes when we have a new question to ask ourselves, how much is enough? The society we live in, that secular world, would have us believe that more is better but what happens when we get to the end of more?
If you stop and think a minute, you suddenly realize two things. The first is that the world is lying to you, you do not have to keep “fixing it”. We still try to though. I believe we do this because we have internalized the idea that we are not good enough and never will be, so we keep trying to fix it, fix ourselves. This leads to the second realization and that is that quite often, the sermons that we hear are rife with this idea, the one that says you aren’t good enough, you sin all the time, you will never be good enough, but you must keep trying to repent.
The good news for us all is that we are indeed good enough, just as we are, just as you are at this very moment. You already have and are enough. You are a beautiful and divine creation. You are not something that needs to be fixed, you are not (as some of my Presbyterian brothers and sisters might say) utterly depraved! The good news is that we have always been good enough for God, who delights in us.
So, what shall we do with all this extra time when we stop trying? Just be! When we rest in the Creator of the Universe we soon discover that we have wasted our time trying to fix what is not broken. That is our moment of “salvation”, that moment when we realize how broken we are without the Living Christ in our lives and then…….to realize that that very presence has always been there.
This saying has been attributed to the great ballplayer, Satchel Paige: “Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits.” So there you have it dear ones, Just Sit! Just Be! And for heaven’s sake stop trying to fix what ain’t broke.
TMM