be careful
The day has gone long and, hungrily, we reach for plates; we stir seasoning into steaming bowls. Kevin glances at Adam, who stands at the desk, absorbed in a video game, something about a leprechaun in search of a pot of gold.
Quietly, the Father says to the son, “Hey, can you set the table?”
Hey child, can you set aside what you’re focused on and prepare to eat with me?
Before the feast, the table; before the sacrifice, the altar; before the relationship, the attention with intention.
Adam’s eyes flash and he fixes Kevin with a glare, and even though he says nothing, I can hear him challenging the audacity of the Father, to pull him away from what he most wants to do. Nevermind hunger and need, Adam has imaginary hoards of treasure to amass for himself.
Isn’t it funny that the gold at the end of the rainbow always disappears? Lep’s World is our world, and I can’t help but think it, that this exchange between Kevin and Adam must be a tiny glimpse of the absurdity of the chase after things that will only fade away, while the King calls us, the lame and the blind and the lost, to eat at His table and find satisfaction forever.
“Don’t store up for yourselves treasure on earth, where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal,” Jesus warned. “Store up treasure in heaven…for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
This is what is real, I want to say to my son, thrusting the utensils toward his hands, but Adam doesn’t understand, so I give him a look that says I love you, but get a grip, and I just say “here” when I hand him the forks, and I mean, here, be here with us. I want those I love to be where I am, that’s exactly what Jesus said, when asking the Father to protect the ones He loves from the trouble of this world. As Ann Voskamp writes in Waymaker, our problems seem to be a problem of location, our location in relation to God, which is why in the garden God asks, “Where are you?” We’re either living here but dwelling with Him and feasting on Him or we’re consuming the world and being consumed by it.
All things are ready, come to the feast.
Adam yanks the placemats from the drawer beneath the desk, pausing to gaze longingly at the leprechaun and twist his head to the arcade sounds still dinging from his tablet. His posture, only half turned toward the table in a crazy, unnatural twist, says, I’m doing this, but I don’t want to.
“No set the table,” Adam mutters as he lays out the placemats, just loudly enough that his voice still carries. “Set the table is finished!”
He whispers vehemently, his head resolutely turned away from us.
“I don’t like it! Not.right.now!”
A friend of mine often says that Adam only says what the rest of us are thinking. God doesn’t need to hear my voice to know I’m complaining over His interruptions, but for some reason it is always easier to find the intention for vocalizing when I’m feeling unhappy. We have noticed that Adam becomes most verbal with us when he doesn’t want to do something or doesn’t like how things are going. He seems to think that if he whispers it will somehow soften our perspective on his rebellion. I get it; sometimes I think that unspoken sins are lesser sins.
I watch as Adam moves on to the napkins, darkly glancing our way to see if Kevin has heard him. As Adam works, he stops periodically, pausing midstride to practice postures of dejection, a sulk on his face, an exaggerated sag in his shoulders. I call it all Adam’s version of dust and ashes, even though there’s nothing even slightly penitent about it.
Privately, I smile, thinking of the number of times I’ve struggled when God’s will doesn’t meet my expectations or follow the plans I’ve imagined, how many times I’ve found a way to let someone else know how I feel about the cost of a sacrifice, especially when my will is the thing on the altar. I can pray as Jesus taught us, saying your will be done, and then get upset when His will turns out not to be what I thought.
Right now, Adam’s deep frown says, you have asked too much.
Observing no immediate reaction in his compassionate, slow-to-anger Father, who, at the moment, has decided to give Adam the space to adjust, Adam mumbles a phrase he memorized as an indication of disgust, something along the lines of “makes me sick,” the word sick landing hard and sudden like a smack, as though he’s just slammed a hand on the table.
Kevin looks up, directly into Adam’s eyes, says quietly, “What did you say?”
Adam shakes his head and drops his gaze, says only, “No.” This is Autistic shorthand that means something close to what Job said when God showed up, something like, I place a hand over my mouth.
The thing is, I have done all this before, little child me fussing with my vast ineffable God about where He’s called me or where He hasn’t, using proper clauses to soften my rebellion, whining in a way that says hey, look at me. And then He does, and He feels so big, and I look away. But even then, He doesn’t respond exactly how I thought He would; even then, His ways are higher.
Kevin walks across the room to our son and places a hand on his shoulder.
“Be careful,” the Father says simply, faithfully, carefully, bending down to absorb the son’s unforgiving glare.
Word says, as a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him, and I have heard His footsteps in the garden, have felt His hand resting on my shoulder, have heard Him say those very words, like any good Shepherd would, “Be careful.” Be careful, because your feet are slipping. Be careful, you’re losing your way. Be careful, because life is not about what you imagined it would be but about walking closer and closer to me. He leads me beside quiet waters; He prepares a table for me; my satisfaction will always be with Him.
“Just set the table,” Kevin says to Adam now, just gently, “and we’ll eat.”
