Inflexible

My teenage daughter’s friend looked aghast as she watched me apply my lipstick. “What is that?” she exclaimed. “What?” I replied. My lipstick had conformed to my regular pattern of application and its odd shape shocked her.

It dawned on me that my life can be like my lipstick. I crave the comfort of a routine and even when briefly challenged with the unfamiliar, I quickly return to a (new) routine. While not typically a bad thing, it sometimes throws me for a loop. Like my lipstick, when I am inflexible in my routine I am more easily broken.

Sometimes my comfortable routine includes an old ‘go-to’ that I have tried to leave behind. Returning to old habits and sins from which I have been given freedom through Jesus Christ sets me up to be broken. My inflexibility to allow God to work His will in my life (by seeking to control circumstances and outcomes or even temporary pleasures) keeps me from being as usable as I want to be for Him. If I stick to my old habits, I become single-mindedly fragile and soon break under pressure.

Jesus compared the ‘new’ that He came to do with old, inflexible wineskins being used to hold new wine and bursting in their rigidity. (Matthew 9:17) He came to make all things new, including me and my routine. If I open my heart to His will and His work, my ‘usability’ is extended and I have strength to do all that I am called to do. I serve the purpose God has given me, and He is glorified.