What Will I Care About Really?

Toni's in Cokato tonight, with our granddaughters. I'm home with Charlie the dog and our renters, who are downstairs in their apartment. After church this morning, I started trimming dead a big spruce in the backyard. I pretty much finished that, managed to attach and program a new thermostat to the space heater our renter uses and did a load of laundry. Yesterday was all about family, so I didn't mind taking care of business today.

While working on things today, I listened to some history, news and political theory. Yup, that's often what I like to do... often I listen to different faith-based recordings, but I didn't do that today. Today I heard a speech given last spring by Michael Goodwin that was given at a Hillsdale College "National Leadership Seminar", a piece on the second amendment on a podcast called "More Perfect," and a fascinating civil war story that I'd never heard.

As I was trimming that tree this afternoon, carefully only getting rid of dead branches, I mistakenly cut a live one off. This big old spruce tree doesn't have many lower branches so I'm sad about it. It's gone, it bothers me. It bothers me partly because I made a stupid mistake that can't be undone, and partly because the tree now, to me, is kind of empty on the side facing the house. As I was over-reacting to that, a verse from the end of the Bible book of Jonah came to mind.

At the end of that book, Jonah is depressed. He's sitting outside the city of Nineveh where he'd been preaching judgment to. But God had changed his mind and decided to be merciful to the people there. Jonah, the preacher, still is sitting there, waiting to see what would happen. As he's there, God had caused a big spruce tree to grow -- no -- just a "plant," but big enough to give Jonah shade. And then God "appointed a worm" to attack the plant, which then withered.

Now Jonah is even more depressed--even angry. He's angry because his favorite shade tree (a "plant" I should say) has died and now he's sitting there in the hot sun and wind. God says, Should you really be angry about that plant? Jonah says "Yes, I should." And then the Lord says this:

“You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?”

In my little backyard, I can get torn up about a stupid mistake I made, and the way the tree will look, while there are so many tragic circumstances out there in the world, some of which I can make a difference in. Will I let myself get upset over little things like cutting off a branch that should have been left in place? Or will I turn my attention to what the Lord is doing in the wider world, praying and grieving and doing what I can to help, letting others know about the mercy of God through Jesus.

Tomorrow early I'll get up and go back to work. I can make a difference there. That's where I'll turn my attention. Lord, give me wisdom about what I will care about in the days and weeks to come.

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