I’m Not Really Interested

While we are all for freedom of speech in our family, we have a seldom followed meal time rule regarding complaining about the food.  The rule is simple - do not complain.

One Saturday morning, we had just started eating after Tina had spent roughly forty five minutes cooking a breakfast of pancakes, bacon, and apples.  Elias started with the borderline comment “are there any small pancakes?”  We let this slide, as it was just a question, and while it could have escalated into a complaint, it did not.

Then Asher chimed in with his opinion of my wife’s labor.  When he first uttered it, the comment was so unusual that I initially did not understand what he had said (it didn’t help that his mouth was partially full of food).  “Did you say I’m not into this bacon?” I questioned him.  Where did he pick up that terminology I wondered.  How does a six year old even know what he is into, and what he isn’t?

“No”, he replied, “I said I’m not really interested in this bacon.  It’s too soft and salty”.

I pondered that a moment.  Not one to pass up an opportunity for some positive reinforcement, I said “I like the way you said that Asher”.  His mother quickly agreed.  My son (the boy formerly identified as a genius) had stumbled onto the perfect way to comment on food he did not like. 

There was such beauty in his comment.  His statement did not attack his mother’s cooking.  It did not express ingratitude for The Lord’s provision of daily bread.  He was not stating as a matter of fact that he was not going to eat the bacon.  It was brilliant, executed perfectly, and couldn’t have been said any better if he had contemplated it for years.  But he didn’t, he just blurted it out off the cuff.  It came out graciously, almost miraculously.  Boy genius strikes again.

Where did our son get such tact, such control?  Could years of diligent parental instruction finally have taken root?  Did my own consistently appreciative attitude towards his mother’s cooking suddenly become his own after my extraordinary role modeling (and humility)?  On the other hand, perhaps The Lord Himself did a work in this young heart, and it was manifested in this masterful piece of conversational art.

Suffice it to say, Asher’s attitude was a small miracle.  Not that our son is totally insensitive and inconsiderate, but he is six.  At that moment, he was living in another realm completely out of character.

It is a realm in which we could all aspire to live.  If somehow we could address certain circumstances with an attitude that said “I’m not really interested in that”, what a difference it would make in our relationships.  It is a realm where we would share what’s on our hearts without treading on the hearts of others, a realm where we would allow The Lord to meet another believer in the way He sees fit, in a way that may not necessarily interest us. 

The applications in church life are endless, and they all reflect the same basic premise:  while those of us who call ourselves followers of Christ may be headed in the same direction, I may not be too excited about the particulars of the course you have chosen (or The Lord has chosen for you).  You may not be too excited about the course I have chosen.  But I can allow you to press on in your way, you can allow me to press on in my way, and we can love and encourage each other as we press on in the common direction of The Lord.

Like Asher’s apparent epiphany, this may take a small miracle.  Our natural tendency is to argue our own point, to attempt to make our own course everyone’s course, or to become frustrated when others don’t choose to walk the same particular path on which we walk.

Thankfully we have been freed from our “natural tendency” by Christ.  We can live in another realm, where we find ourselves living and behaving outside our natural tendencies, a realm where we treat each other with gentleness.  When we do, we must be quick to thank Him for doing a work in our heart.  We fully understand that it is not us, but it is like that apparent out-of-character miracle that our young son experienced.  And just as Tina and I thought as Asher gently stated his position on bacon, we may catch ourselves saying “where did THAT come from?”

Note:  Asher is now 8 1/2 years old.  

First appeared in the December 2009 edition of the Manna. http://readthemanna.org