God and the Dishes

I used to lose it over dishes in the sink. One time I got so angry they were not done that I threw them in the trash, yelling the entire time. A grown man, standing at his own sink, throwing plates in the garbage because nobody washed them fast enough.

So when I say you came home and made your whole house pay over a sink full of dishes, I am not preaching down at you. I have stood right where you are standing.

Not a real crisis. Dishes. A shoe left in the doorway. A thing done ninety percent right instead of exactly your way. And the people you love most got the full weight of your worst self, over a sink.

Now set a bigger picture next to that one.

Imagine God did it to you. Imagine every time you got dirty, every time you fell short of His standard, cut the corner, lost the temper, thought the thought you had no business thinking, He came home hot. Slammed the cabinet. Made you feel the full weight of how you failed Him. Again.

You would not last a week. None of us would. We fail Him before breakfast.

But that is not what He does. Not close. "The LORD is compassionate and gracious, Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness" (Psalm 103:8). "He has not dealt with us according to our sins, Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities" (Psalm 103:10). He knows exactly what you are made of, and He is patient with it in a way that should stop you cold.

Jesus told a story about a man who owed a king a fortune he could never repay, not in ten lifetimes. The king forgave the whole thing. Wiped it clean. And that same forgiven man walked straight out the door, found a guy who owed him pocket change, and started choking him over it. The king hauled him back in. "You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?" (Matthew 18:32-33).

Read that again. Then look at the sink.

You have been forgiven a mountain. The kind of debt that put Jesus on a cross. And you are standing in your kitchen coming apart over a few dishes.

Standards are fine. Teach the kids, ask for the help. But watch the size of your anger against the size of the offense, and then hold both of those up against what God let go for you. "Just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you" (Colossians 3:13). Not as they earned it. As you were forgiven.

A man who has actually felt the weight of his own pardon cannot stay that hot over dishes. He just cannot. The math does not work. You do not walk out of a courtroom where a mountain of your debt got erased and start throttling somebody over spare change.

I know, because I threw the dishes in the trash instead of remembering the mountain. Do not be me at that sink.

So the next time it rises, and it will, stop at the door. Remember the mountain that did not get held against you this morning. Then walk in.

Come home to them the way He comes to you. Slow to anger. Mindful they are dust, fragile and failing, same as you. Give them the grace you are standing in.

The way you walk into that kitchen is the sermon your kids will actually remember. Make it one worth remembering.