The Test We Always Try to Walk Around

Have you ever left something out in your house just to see how long it would take someone to pick it up? I have. I call it “the test.” 

It usually doesn’t work.  

But I’ve tried many times over the years, to leave out those dirty socks on the living room floor, the empty glass on the counter, or the piece of trash. I’ve been curious (and fascinated at the same time) to see how long it would take someone to deal with it. But I found out, that people will usually just walk over it, or fail to see it in the first place.  It’s almost as if they are “blind” to it. Even if it shouldn’t be there.

And if they do see it, I think they secretly hoped that if they ignored it long enough, that “mom” would take care of it.

And it often resulted in just that. 

When my kids were home, I often tried these “tests” over the years. And as I have reflected on them (and the failure of them) - I have wondered if God has His own tests that He has tried out on us. 

Do you think He does? 

I wonder if God “tests” me to see how long it will take me to deal with a certain situation, or if I will take care of something on my own; without Him having to clearly point it out to me. And I wonder, how often I walk over or around these tests. How often do I fail to see them altogether? 

I wonder how often I ignore these things, hoping that God will take care of them for me?

Maybe this explains why we have to learn the same lessons over and over again. 

Maybe this is why we seem to have certain things happen continually to us in life. We just don’t take care of them the first time they cross our paths.

We try to avoid, look away, ignore, and pretend that we don’t need to deal with things.

But we do.

I hope that I’ll be more aware the next time God might see fit to “test” me. I hope that I’ll see what it is that He’s waiting for me to pay attention to.  And I hope that I can learn to take care of things in the right way, with the right attitude, so that He doesn’t have to give me the same test over and over again.

For, I really don’t want to fail a test. 

And I REALLY don’t want to have to take it over and over, and over again.

How about you?