Organizing things

This morning I took one of those big accordion cardboard filing boxes and started to organize my husband’s medical bills. First the big classifications into departments—hospital, emergency room physicians, heart group, neurology group, etc. Then each group of bills by “date of service” and account number, of which each specialty has up to seven separate dealings. Finally, I made sure each department had been paid installments, and that I had marked on each bill the amount and date and check numbers of my payments. Yeesh.

I know that’s low-tech, and some of you are laughing right now, or looking into whether it’s possible to cancel the part of your WORLD membership that provides access my column. But I’m low-tech and I feel a lot better than I did a few hours ago, just by being organized and having a better grasp of reality, at least in this small detail of my life that has to do with my relationship to the local hospital.

But I think it not a bad idea to apply this same policy to our spiritual life—and main Relationship. There is no reason, to my thinking, why I should be clearheaded in my worldly relations and not clearheaded in my spiritual relations, which are even more important. Why would I devote the morning (and much more time than that overall) to properly sorting out my status and proper function toward these doctors, and then be sloppy in my understanding of my status regarding God? After all, we are told by Jesus that the most important commandment of all is:

“… you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30, ESV).

We are called to a mind fully engaged, as the footnote on the word “mind” in my study Bible suggests:

“Dianioa … literally, “a thinking through” … The word suggests understanding, insight, meditation, reflection, perception, the gift of apprehension, the faculty of thought. When this faculty is renewed by the Holy Spirit, the whole mindset changes from the fearful negativism of the carnal mind to the vibrant, positive thinking of the quickened spiritual mind.”

And I must admit that I do find it to be true that I am most peaceful and most happy in God when I have things straight in my mind spiritually. Namely, when I harness fearful thoughts and calmly divide up all of life into the things that I can and should act on, and the things I cannot affect directly but that only He can do and fix. So then, for example, God says “Love your neighbor,” so I will do that. But He does not say, “Change your neighbor’s heart toward you,” so for that I wait for God.

Thus organizing life’s challenges and problems rightly in my mind, I go on my way in peace, reminded again of my proper duty and powers and limitations, and not transgressing on God’s or confusing the two.

Andrée Seu Peterson’s Won’t Let You Go Unless You Bless Me, regularly $12.95, is now available from WORLD for only $5.95.