Sweet and Sour

Monday 3/31/2014 5:06 AM

A phrase of my opening prayer caught my attention this morning.  “Give us such love to thee as may sweeten our obedience.”  Sweet seems like a strange adjective to describe obedience and, as I am prone to do, I tried to contrast it with sour obedience.  When I did so my mind went immediately back to when my children were small and I asked them to pick up their toys.  Sometimes they would do so cheerfully, especially if there was something special that was going to happen afterwards like going away somewhere or perhaps eating ice cream.  At other times obedience was accompanied by an attitude of resentment and done begrudgingly.

Pleasant tasks that need to be done can probably always be characterized by sweet obedience.  It is easy to maintain a positive attitude when the job I am doing is something I enjoy but when the task is unpleasant there are only a couple of things that can change my attitude from sour to sweet.  Unpleasant tasks can be made sweeter when you are working alongside other people.  Our church does service projects in a local neighborhood four times per year.  The job we do is usually painting and cleaning up yards by trimming bushes, weeding flowerbeds or disposing of piles of junk.  Jobs like that can be overwhelming when done alone but somehow working with thirty or forty other people not only make the job go more quickly but the job even seems more pleasant.  Unpleasant tasks can also be made sweeter if you love the person for whom you are doing the job.  I do not enjoy changing dirty diapers but when my grandchildren have a dirty diaper I gladly change it because I do not want them to be uncomfortable or get diaper rash.  My love for them changes my attitude about the job.

My opening prayer suggests that if my love for God increases then my attitude towards being obedient to God will be better.  The closing prayer of my devotional material this week says, “Be bound to Christ for this day and always.”  If I am bound to Christ then I will always be working beside him and any unpleasant task will be made sweeter.  Lord, increase my capacity for love and give me an awareness of your presence in my life to sweeten my obedience.