Thought of the Day 12.22.09

I don’t know if any of you have ever heard of this concept, but I’m currently working on a list of tasks my wife gave me. It’s my favorite thing in the whole wide world.

Well, as you would expect, the things on this list are supremely irritating, mostly because I’ve neglected to do them across the span of so many previous lists that they are now gargantuan, both in reality and psychologically. But some of the items are irritating for another reason. Even though they seem small, they also seem to always have just one last little bit of them which never gets done. Like after I’ve mailed and handed out all the Christmas letters, I’ll discover one for which I have neither an address nor a likely personal encounter. No check mark yet. Drat!

But here’s the thing, even as annoying as these items are, I still feel a tremendous sense of relief when I can actually check one off. In fact, I suppose it’s precisely because they become so annoying that this feels so good. Do you think this might be why God allows some of the holiness goals in my life to remain unchecked for awhile?