When I was an adolescent roughly 13 years ago now when I was around 12 I use to drink orange juice non stop. Not just any orange juice but pulp free with calcium orange juice.
It was the summer before 7th grade and I was trying out for the 7th grade football team. I drank Orange Juice without pulp and with calcium for two reasons:
Vitamin C so I would never be ill
and Calcium so I would never break a bone
The logic of an adolescent is unmatched.
I use to reach up and grab the biggest glasses the cupboard contained and I would fill it literally to the brim with OJ then I would perform the balancing act of walking it to the front room to play video games and drink my elixir of immortality.
One day I recall in the middle of the summer of 2000 I had just poured this giant class and placed it beside me. After a time and with the grace of a 12 year old I knocked the glass over and out poured at least a pint of OJ. It spread like an orange oil spill over the ocean blue carpet.
Horror filled my heart as I knew Doug was in the other room. I had to be quiet and I had to be convert to clean up this spill. As I was making trips back and forth to the kitchen to grab towels and paper towels I had strategically placed the ottoman over the spill in between trips.
Eventually Doug too note of my many trips to the kitchen. He followed me into the front room and I was resting on the ottoman in the middle of the floor like nothing was different about this day.
"Move the ottoman"
my heart stopped completely as those words entered my ears rattled around and found their way to my brain.
I felt like an orchestra conductor the more I rolled away the ottoman like a stone door to an ancient grave the louder Doug's sentence became.
"ADAM! WHAT DID YOU DO? WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO POUR SUCH A GIANT GLASS OF ORANGE JUICE? COME ON!"
the rest is a bit fuzzy in my memory but the message was received...
I messed up, as if my obvious shame and attempt at covering it up wasn't evidence enough to my father he wanted to make sure I knew that was not a good thing.
As a 25 year old man I've found there is grace for adults that there isn't found for children.
These days if I spill something on a couch or carpet while visiting my parents I don't receive nearly the tongue thrashing I once did.
Why do we do this?
We teach our children:
Use kind words
Use kind hands
Share
Wait
Clean up after yourself
Yet we as adults don't really believe in what we are teaching. If we believed in these teachings wouldn't we find them in our own lives?
Why is it all of the sudden adults are allowed to yell at one another? Hit each other? Keep to themselves? Demand? Have someone else clean for them?
Is it not the same way with the stories of the bible?
We teach these songs, these stories, these "tales"
but as adults do we really believe them? Do we trust in them as children do?
Jesus becomes Santa the older we get.
Why?
Why don't we see adults walking around grabbing each other and saying:
"That was not a good choice, what do you need to say to that cashier?"
"We do not talk to our friends like that"
"You can go sit down for 5 minutes, we do not hit our friends at the bar"
I think the fact is we don't believe these things are the way we should live.
I think as children we see our parents acting as complete hypocrites and we tell ourselves:
"once I'm an adult I'm moving out and living by my own rules."
But our own rules are really the exact rules our parents live by.
and the cycle continues.
What if we practiced what we preached?
What if we believed in Jesus?
What if we didn't have such little faith?
What if we trusted, staked our lives on the teachings of Jesus?
What would our lives look like?
What would our children's lives look like?
What would our communities look like?
Why do we live this way?
Why do we settle?
Which is it?
An orange Juice spill is a heinous crime or is it easily covered by grace?
Window - The Album Leaf
It was the summer before 7th grade and I was trying out for the 7th grade football team. I drank Orange Juice without pulp and with calcium for two reasons:
Vitamin C so I would never be ill
and Calcium so I would never break a bone
The logic of an adolescent is unmatched.
I use to reach up and grab the biggest glasses the cupboard contained and I would fill it literally to the brim with OJ then I would perform the balancing act of walking it to the front room to play video games and drink my elixir of immortality.
One day I recall in the middle of the summer of 2000 I had just poured this giant class and placed it beside me. After a time and with the grace of a 12 year old I knocked the glass over and out poured at least a pint of OJ. It spread like an orange oil spill over the ocean blue carpet.
Horror filled my heart as I knew Doug was in the other room. I had to be quiet and I had to be convert to clean up this spill. As I was making trips back and forth to the kitchen to grab towels and paper towels I had strategically placed the ottoman over the spill in between trips.
Eventually Doug too note of my many trips to the kitchen. He followed me into the front room and I was resting on the ottoman in the middle of the floor like nothing was different about this day.
"Move the ottoman"
my heart stopped completely as those words entered my ears rattled around and found their way to my brain.
I felt like an orchestra conductor the more I rolled away the ottoman like a stone door to an ancient grave the louder Doug's sentence became.
"ADAM! WHAT DID YOU DO? WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO POUR SUCH A GIANT GLASS OF ORANGE JUICE? COME ON!"
the rest is a bit fuzzy in my memory but the message was received...
I messed up, as if my obvious shame and attempt at covering it up wasn't evidence enough to my father he wanted to make sure I knew that was not a good thing.
As a 25 year old man I've found there is grace for adults that there isn't found for children.
These days if I spill something on a couch or carpet while visiting my parents I don't receive nearly the tongue thrashing I once did.
Why do we do this?
We teach our children:
Use kind words
Use kind hands
Share
Wait
Clean up after yourself
Yet we as adults don't really believe in what we are teaching. If we believed in these teachings wouldn't we find them in our own lives?
Why is it all of the sudden adults are allowed to yell at one another? Hit each other? Keep to themselves? Demand? Have someone else clean for them?
Is it not the same way with the stories of the bible?
We teach these songs, these stories, these "tales"
but as adults do we really believe them? Do we trust in them as children do?
Jesus becomes Santa the older we get.
Why?
Why don't we see adults walking around grabbing each other and saying:
"That was not a good choice, what do you need to say to that cashier?"
"We do not talk to our friends like that"
"You can go sit down for 5 minutes, we do not hit our friends at the bar"
I think the fact is we don't believe these things are the way we should live.
I think as children we see our parents acting as complete hypocrites and we tell ourselves:
"once I'm an adult I'm moving out and living by my own rules."
But our own rules are really the exact rules our parents live by.
and the cycle continues.
What if we practiced what we preached?
What if we believed in Jesus?
What if we didn't have such little faith?
What if we trusted, staked our lives on the teachings of Jesus?
What would our lives look like?
What would our children's lives look like?
What would our communities look like?
Why do we live this way?
Why do we settle?
Which is it?
An orange Juice spill is a heinous crime or is it easily covered by grace?
Window - The Album Leaf