I don't work well under pressure. My stomach knots up. I'm easily annoyed and impatient. A timed situation is a weight on top of my head that pushes my brain into my shoulders with each tick-tock of the clock. I need time to do things well, or I don't want to do them at all. Friday night my granddaughters, hubby and I built a gingerbread house out of graham crackers and icing. It's an annual event at our church. My granddaughters revel in the experience each year; they mark their calendars as soon as we find out the date so we can all work on it together. It's a blast. Each family group is only given bowls of icing and graham crackers. We each bring all the decorative candies or cookies we want to dress it up. No two houses are ever alike; designs range from log cabins and traditional homes to dog houses and sugar-cube castles. My problem comes from being alloted one short hour to assemble this house and decorate it. Pressure cooker crafting does not mix with my character.
Friday night I was annoyed with several things. Mostly I was annoyed at myself for my inability to figure out how to get my roof to stay up on the walls we assembled. We covered the graham crackers with chocolate icing and stuck peanut brittle on it to resemble a stone home. Then we placed the crackers up against nutty butter wafer cookies. The cookies worked as our brace. The walls went up beautifully. For the first time ever, we managed to get them to stand without falling over. But our woebegotten roof sagged and sat precariously upon its walls. It was so frustrating trying to keep it from caving in. When the girls added the mini-M&M's to the roof as Christmas lights, it came close to collapsing. When we finished, gaps in the roof clearly revealed that our roof needed critical re-roofing and an engineer's assistance.
I realized tonite that I'm a lot like that gingerbread house. The Lord gives me the Foundation of my faith to stand erect like the walls of my house by the salvation through His Son, Jesus. He provides the glue to keep me from falling apart by the direction of His Spirit and the promises within His scriptures. When I allow myself to get all caught up in the things of this world to decorate, or embellish my faith, I'm certain to crumble beneath the weight of man-made grace, progressive liberties, weak-kneed doctrine, and legalistic viewpoints. The world may pass off its logic and reason to try and batter my faith, but the foundation remains strong no matter how many times a roof caves in from the weight of embellishments. selahV
