Sewing and Ironing

What we do not realize in the moment of growing up is the way our parents are teaching us lessons needed for living.  Some of those lessons may be verbal, but a lot of them are non-verbal unstructured moments of teaching and learning.  By the time I was ready to leave home for college, I had been in that classroom a long time.  It took a long time to realize how much I had learned at a time in my life when I thought I already knew most stuff.  Just before I left home, my mother gave me two final lessons which proved invaluable.  One was how to iron clothes and the second was how to sew on a button.   

It is surprising the things we remember from the days when we were learning what others were teaching. When young Timothy got one of his letters from his spiritual mentor, the Apostle Paul, he read simple straightforward words which must have stayed with him through a life time.  In one of the those teachings, he wrote, "But as for you, man of God,...pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.  Fight the good fight of the faith..."  (I Timothy 6:11)  What Timothy heard was a word which called him to avoid getting caught up in splitting spiritual hairs.  It was a word which called him to focus on things which characterize the essence of faithfully following after God.    

The Christian faith is not a complicated thing.  It centers on Christ.  It is rooted in faith in what cannot be seen.  Its foundation is love.  Grace is what holds it together.  It is as simple as sewing on a button and as uncomplicated as ironing a shirt.  It only gets complicated when we make it complicated.