When I sold my house and moved into a small apartment I made an extravagant purchase, a tiny dishwasher.  A tiny dishwasher did not come with a tiny price tag, which is why it was such an extravagant purchase. So you can imagine my dismay when I opened it this morning to put away my clean and sterilized dishes and found them dripping with water and still dirty.

I calmly poured a cup of coffee, took it to my room and before my bottom hit the chair a thought popped into my head….”check the manual”.  I keep all my manuals to all my appliances in one drawer so I found it easily, flipped to the second page, looked at the settings and realized the knob had somehow been turned to rinse only. One quick twist back to wash and voila’ problem solved, the dishwasher is running smoothly as we speak.

If only all the problems of life could be solved so easily.

I will confess that since Joe has been gone, my typical response to this problem would  have started with fretting over the cost of the dishwasher and how it didn’t last much past a year and how much will it cost to have it repaired and who will I call to come look at it to see what could possibly be wrong….this would be followed by a lot of  wringing of hands then a Facebook post or two and a couple of agonizing tweets…a quick visit to Pinterest, a jump on to Amazon, then a few phone calls to get even more opinions so I can then begin the fretting process all over again. This time over all my many choices of possible solutions. {{ heavy sigh }}

After all that angst and wearing myself to a frazzle I will be so worn out I collapse, then I  hear;

“{Glenna} Are you tired? Worn out? {with all your fretting,} Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. {Really Lord?} I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” Matt 11:28-30 (the Msg.)

Yep….lesson learned….check the manual first!

Amen sweet Jesus…Amen!!!!