OK, I admit it; I am the king of shortcuts.  Why waste time with all the unnecessaries? I’ll throw on a dirty pair of socks rather than take time to run to the dresser and find a fresh set, I hate detours, and as for planning ahead:  who has the time.  So this past weekend, one of my chores on my to-do list, which keeps growing much faster than my have-done list, was to burn a brush pile by our home.  I’d been putting this off for a number of months, but the weather was perfect with no wind and mild temps and that brush pile was just getting too large to ignore.  Usually, when we do this, we drag a garden hose out the hundred and fifty yards to the brush pile; but we seldom need it, plus I have a pond nearby, so I decided it just wasn’t worth the effort this time.  What I had forgotten was that just a few weeks earlier I had mowed all of the prairie grass on our property, and now it was surrounding my brush pile like a mob of groupies waiting for the party to start.  You know what happened.  The fire got out of control, started the dead grass ablaze, and I was sent sprinting back and forth the one hundred plus yards to our home unraveling multiple garden hoses while my son tried to keep the fire at bay with a bucket and some pond water.  Six or seven thousand calories of workout later, we finally had the fire under control, with a nice acre or so of parched land.  Hey, at least the brush pile was gone!

In retrospect I guess it was kind of comical, although I definitely wasn’t laughing as the fire began surrounding my new F150 pickup.  Unfortunately, it isn’t just with ‘controlled’ burns that I tend toward this kind of thinking.  My spiritual life is not really too different some times. It seems like it’s frequently just much easier to rush into a decision, a ministry opportunity or a ‘discussion’ with my children without first seeking God’s perspective on the situation. I mean, with all of the crises around me, who has time anyway?  The end results, however, are often much like my small wild fire, chasing around, trying to avoid disaster, when all I really needed to do in the first place was plan ahead a little.

Of course it’s never quit as easy as that.  It takes effort and experience to listen to the voice of our King.  I need to learn to take time to be quiet as well as recognize my need for guidance.  More importantly, I need to foster this relationship as a way of life. 

That’s the spirituality that I long for: intimacy with a Father that is actively involved in my day.  Because, quite honestly, I make a lousy firefighter.  

To the King,

David