Break Those Beans

G

reen beans are my favorite vegetable, especially when they’re fresh.  When I was growing up, our family had a vegetable garden every summer.  My dad would plow the field, sow the seed, stake the tomato plants, and wait for nature to take her course.  In a very short time, the plants began to sprout and before I knew it, I found myself in the garden, bent over in the bean row, picking beans.

 

Despite my protest, I found myself several times a week in the garden, always picking green beans.  Since they were my favorite vegetable, my mom said I should be grateful to pick them.  After all, I certainly didn’t mind eating them once they were on the table.  I just didn’t like picking them.  I guess you could say I suffered from the Little Red Hen syndrome, I didn’t want to work; I just wanted to eat.

Picking the beans was just the beginning.  After our work in the garden was over, we went home to string, break, and can the beans.  My job was breaking the beans into small pieces.  I didn’t like stringing them, and when I tried, I never got all the strings removed.  So, I sat with a large bowl on my lap, breaking the beans my mom and the other adults placed there.  As soon as I emptied the bowl and got excited about being through, someone would dump a large handful of beans into it and I had to start breaking all over again.  It seemed we would never finish with those beans.

Every time I asked to do something else, my mom would always say the same thing, Blake, break those beans!”  She kept telling me to keep my eye on the goal, fresh beans on the table, even in the winter.  This didn’t help much but I kept at my goal until we finished.  Later

during the year, my work paid off as we enjoyed fresh, canned vegetables throughout the winter.

                

There is a good application to the Christian life in this story from my childhood.  Much too often Christians take on too many responsibilities.  We want to be involved in every aspect of our church. Unless we have our hands in every church-related activity or unless we support every type of religious program, we believe we fail in our efforts to live a life pleasing to God.  As a result, we do many things but we do none of them well.

This was not David’s focus in Psalm 27:4.  On the contrary, David suggests that a directed, focused, approach in seeking God provides the greatest reward.  “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”  David’s goal is clear.  The entire focus of his life is God.  He does not seek to be a preacher; he does not intend to teach a Sunday school class, he is not interested in joining committees or being an active participant in every charity drive.  Instead, his focus is on dwelling in God’s house and gazing on his beauty every day of his life.

I

 am not suggesting that preaching, teaching, or volunteering are bad pursuits.  However, it does seem that until our focus becomes God and God alone, we miss the point of the Christian life.  As long as we insist on selecting our place of service, the emphasis is on us.  When we shift our attention from what we want or what we think we should do to what God wants and what he thinks, we will find that life will take on a new perspective.  Jesus himself spoke to this point when Martha complained that Mary wasn’t helping her. Jesus simply said, “but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:42).  Yes, we only need one thing, to concentrate on God and his will.  Are you focused today?