Sum Sum Summertime

Today is the 26th of June. The kids have been in full time summer mode for a month now. It doesn't seem that long though. They had a week off after school, then two weeks of VBS and now another two weeks off before another round of VBS's. It is too hot outside to do much of anything besides sit in the shade under a sprinkler. Thankfully, my sister upgraded her pool and gave us her unused one. We love it. It's just big enough for all three kids, but still small enough that we don't have to have the expense of a filter.

I was thinking about something just the other day. I was hanging a bunch of spider man pictures and stickers in my son's room. (I got this huge one - he's life sized - for $1.50!!! It was supposed to be $29.50! But I got him and a ton of others for a buck fifty each! Talk about clearance heaven!)
But anyway... what I was thinking about as I was hanging all these webbed men was that we have become a society of do-it-yourselfers. It used to be that if you wanted a room painted, you hired someone. If you wanted a deck built, you hired a carpenter. If you wanted your house sided, you called someone. If you wanted anything besides your furniture moved around in your living room, you called in someone who had the experience, the know how to do it. Growing up, we'd never heard of having huge movable stickers in your bedroom for decoration. It was straight wallpaper or paint. Now, people do all sorts of home renovations cheaper and easier than the professionals used to do it.
We can do anything to our homes that you can think of, and do it ourselves, with the help of the internet and Bob Vila's famous books. Who needs a decorator or a carpenter? We can do it!
This idea has totally permeated the way we live. We want things, newer, faster, and cheaper than our parents had them. It's the way we live.
The idea that I can't get out of my head is that there is one thing in this world- or out of it really- that we cannot do on our own. We cannot earn our way to heaven. We cannot get there ourselves. We cannot go pick up a gallon of Heaven On the Way at Lowe's. We cannot simply teach ourselves how to get there. We can have a total do it yourself existence. You can live completely on your own means, fixing, building, transforming your life the way you want it to be. But no matter how hard we try, no matter how beautiful our homes, our physical structures that we live in, or our physical bodies are, no matter how we work, how many good things we do for others, we can't do it alone. We can't get there on our own.
I think that even we as Christians sometimes get stuck in that mode. Not that we believe we can work our way to heaven, because we know differently, but we get in the mode of thinking that if we just do one more thing, Jesus will love us a little bit more. That he'll look with just a little more grace on our lives if we just shine our faces his way a little more often. That we can make our lives a little more beautiful in his eyes by being a better person. That's not the case. He loves us no matter what. He loves us the same today and tomorrow. The grace pouring out from his heart to ours is not going to be deflated because I did something wrong. It's also not going to suddenly become more because of something I did right. His grace is sufficient for me. His grace overpowers me every day. His love covers me and all that I do right and wrong every day. It is easy to forget that in the duldrums of everyday existence.
The Lord calls us to Him. The Lord calls us to come to his throne. To worship him. To be humble. We are called to be weak in the world's eyes, to be like children in our worship of him. Only in our weakness, in our humility, can we truly be strong in the Lord. Only when you look to him and say that you cannot do it yourself. That you cannot do enough good things, that you are not strong enough to climb that invisible ladder to his embrace on your own. Only in that submission will we be what we are called to be. Only in that moment of total surrender will the vision come into focus. The picture we've been trying to see the whole time, trying to paint ourselves. Only in his light and love and glory will we realize that we can't do it ourselves. We have to let him reveal that to us.