What makes you think your way is better?

Good morning and welcome to Wednesday, May 12, 2010. By now all of you are aware that I am an early person. In fact, I've been told by other early persons that I am even earlier than them, therefore, perhaps I need to be called an early early person. How do you know if you are in this category? I suppose if being up at the crack of dawn seems like you're sleeping late then you might be a candidate. On the other hand, I am typically in bed by 9:30 p.m., and asleep by 10 p.m. This must seem like torture to night owls who would never even think about bedtime before midnight. We are some funny people, don't you agree? My wife leans towards the later bedtime although she does quite a bit of napping in the recliner as the evening progresses. I am pretty much a slave to routine and you likely are also because even those who say they aren't are typically connected to their discombobulated schedule and that becomes their routine. The key is to not allow a routine to become a rut because one definition of a rut has it as a grave with both ends kicked out. Attitude is what makes a routine meaningful. Most days, not all, because we all have those challenging days, but most days I get up excited about whatever it is I have before me. I can become agitated when I am off my schedule a little. I like to be in my car by 4 a.m. so that I can listen to a summary of the news as I get started. Some days I miss it by five minutes and that causes me to miss that summary and I do get peeved at myself when that happens. But, as we all know there is another summary coming at 4:30 a.m. but I still like to get it at 4 a.m.

Now you are reading this and saying how glad you are that you are not as weird as I am. Right? Hold on neighbor because I imagine you have some quirky stuff that you do but you don't recognize it because you own it, it is integrated into your routine. I wouldn't think of putting steak sauce of any kind on my steak and I like mine somewhat rare. I've been with people who order a huge expensive steak, have it cooked until it's like leather, and then smother it with ketchup, and they appear to actually enjoy it. What's up with that? Are they crazy or what? No. They, for whatever reason, do things differently. I'm not saying the way we do things doesn't rub off because I've seen some of mine reflected in our boys. I remember hearing one of them responding to a waiter in a steakhouse once: "Why would I ruin a perfectly good steak by putting steak sauce on it?" The trouble we get into is when we take our routine and use it as the model for everyone else. I'm not talking about right and wrong. That's God's domain. I'm talking about our way of doing things. If we aren't careful we can begin to believe we are superior because of being an early person, or in my case, an early early person. We can think we are better because of how we eat our food, or how we go about doing whatever it is that we do. Time out! I enjoy raw oysters. My wife would croak if she tried to eat one. How foolish it would be to think I'm better than her because of something as silly as a raw oyster.

But if we are not careful we can actually allow these preferences to become principles where we draw bright lines and essentially live in a world mostly focused on how we do it. Again, I'm not talking about morality because the objective standard for right and wrong is defined by God Himself as provided in His Word, the Bible. Maybe because of our abilities, or our good fortune, we can become smug and if we are not careful we end up looking down on others. Whatever it is that causes us to look down on anyone else, whoa, we need to stop and get a grip. It is only by the grace of God that we are able to do anything at all, period, end of story. Some say, yeah but I worked hard to get the education I have, therefore, I deserve the credit for what I have accomplished. What about the other person who worked just as hard as you but things have not worked out for them? Maybe I learned to be an early person when I accompanied my grandfather who most often signed up for the midnight shift when we went to sit up with the dead. Maybe I learned to enjoy the foods I enjoy because of how my mom prepared our meals. That didn't make the ones who couldn't do the midnight shift lesser than us. That didn't make the moms who didn't emphasize cooking like my mom lesser than her. It just means they had a different set of approaches which led to their routines. I know I write quite often about this because I've had to learn, at times the hard way, that my way is not only not the only way, but it is only one way and there are plenty of others that also work well. Humility comes when we see life as it really is, appreciate our position before God, and come to realize our total dependence upon Him and His grace for even our next heartbeat. Meanwhile,"Could you please turn down the sound of those game show reruns, it's nearly 10 p.m. and people with a lick of sense should be asleep by now!" May God bless each one! Amen. .....More later.