The Spoon Rest

I was distracted last night as I was preparing supper. In my moment of inattention I had turned on the wrong element on the stove. So when it came time to sit down and eat, i discovered that we would be eating our first course in two courses, with the corn-on-the-cob being the second course all on its own. Not a problem. ‘No harm, no foul’, as they say.

And that should have been the case! However when I noticed that I had turned the wrong burner on, I also noticed that the china spoon rest was on the hot burner. This spoon rest was important to me, not because it was fundamentally valuable but because of who had given it to me. And so my immediate reaction, almost without thinking [although the first instinctual thought that passed through my mind was to leave it there and let it cool gradually!] was to grab a fork from the table and move it off the burner onto the surface of the stovetop. No sooner had the cold fork touched the china surface, than it broke into three pieces, only fit for the garbage.

As I took the broken pieces off the stovetop this morning, I was thinking how far too often we are unable to leave things alone, how we feel that we need to do something.

Two of the parables or stories about Jesus immediately came to mind, times when he kept himself out of the healing processing both of them involving women. One we find in Luke 8:48 when the author Luke has Jesus saying to the woman who suffered from haemorrhages ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well, go in peace’, and again in John 8:11 when he says to the woman caught in adultery, ’…Go your way, and from now on do not sin again’. In both cases he kept himself out of the healing process by giving it back to the women. He didn’t ask them to report back to him for further counselling, nor did he suggest that they come and listen to his next talk, nor did he ask someone who knew them to keep an eye on them. He trusted in them to do everything necessary for their own healing.

How often do we find it impossible to display that level of trust? I certainly didn’t last night with the spoon rest and my intervention had disastrous results.

Someone is hurting, or grieving, or scared, someone who we care deeply about, someone who we don’t want to see hurting, and while we may listen to their concerns how may of us can resist the impulse to give some advice?

We immediately suggest a solution or a better way of dealing with the situation, thereby taking the responsibility for finding that solution away from the person who is hurting. It may simply be by telling of someone else who had been in the same place and had done ‘such & such’ a thing which solved their problem, and if the person who is hurting would just do the same thing, they too would be OK once again.

As it says in Proverbs 3,5 ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.’ a verse which is often quoted to encourage us to trust in God, But in that same verse we are also told not to rely on our own insight. Surely this, along with the stories of Jesus, should encourage us to not only trust in God, but also to have trust in those around us to find the proper solution for themselves. Our part is to let them be, to be a sounding board, to be there for them when needed, but to let them heal themselves. If I had applied that theory last night, the spoon rest might still be whole!

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