.tripper.

Maintaining balance is not what you would call one of my strengths and while I'm not a complete klutz, I am prone to the occasional topple.

One such instance occurred about 3 weeks ago. I had just been to church and had to rush off to a family picnic, on the way, I stopped at local shopping centre to drop off some items to be dry cleaned and buy some batteries. By chance, I happened to run into my flatmate in Coles on my way to get some AA's. The line to the check out was unnecessarily long and in an effort to save some time, I embarked on a mission to find my flatmate and ask him to purchase on my behalf. This mission involved a dash through the fruit and vegetable section...who would have thought that a rouge grape would come across my path, rendering me flat on my butt in front of a stack of bananas (of the human and fruit variety). Needless to say, I was blushing like a tomato. I found my flatmate, gave him the batteries and fled!

To console myself, I grabbed a take away coffee and a slice of carrot cake. I toddled off to my car, opened the door, flung my handbag onto the passenger seat and felt something slip from my hand. My precious carrot cake had tumbled to an untimely death....much like myself a few moments earlier. Amazingly, the cake had remained in tact (as I had....well, physically...not so much emotionally). I stood there for a good ten seconds trying to decide if I should pick up the cake or not....


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I'm ashamed to admit it, but I snatched it up, plonked myself behind the wheel, drank my coffee and savoured every morsel of the gravel infested carrot cake.

In addition to my physical trips, I have noticed that I have been tripping in other ways recently. There have been no special brownies, or mystical mushroom pizzas, instead, my trips have been of a moral nature. Honestly, I haven’t been living out what I profess to believe and I’ve tripped in a multitude of ways.

I was reading Luke (7:40-50) the other day and was reminded of Gods amazing grace when I came across the following passages about Jesus being anointed by the sinful woman.

Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”

“Tell me, teacher,” he said.

“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”

Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

I love how God forgives. That forgiveness is not impingent on what I do, but rather what he has done. I trip every day and I am so grateful that he catches me.

.the snooze button.

Every morning I have the same battle with the snooze button. I set my alarm for 7am and have the snooze scheduled to alarm at five minute intervals. The wake up tone isn't some soothing melody to gently rouse me out of bed - its a grating, ear bleeding raucous that makes nails scraping down a chalkboard sound like Beethoven's 5th Symphony. Still, this heinous noise isn't enough to get me up in the morning.

I've tried numerous methods, however none seem to be successful. Once, I was house sitting and was lucky enough to be living by myself. The unit had two levels, with the bedroom on the top level. I set my alarm up downstairs so I had to get up and traverse down the staircase to shut off the alarm. Nevertheless after I turned it off, I climbed back up to my bed and returned to sweet, sweet slumber. Currently, my IPOD is set up to kick off at 7am and even my favourite tunes are not enough to snap me out of dreamland.

Love it or hate it, the snooze button is a powerful tool. In the right hands it provides the opportunity for a few more moments of precious sleep, in the wrong hands it can lead to sleeping in and forgetting an important morning ritual, such as putting on underwear or brushing away that odious morning breath. Either way, the snooze button is much more significant than many of us probably realise.

I can't help but wonder if my constant warfare with the snooze button is a reflection of a larger issue in my life. How much am I snoozing through life? What time am I wasting when I could be achieving so much more?

How can I snooze when there is so much injustice in the world? Brokenness, pain, hatred, malice, greed, envy, jealousy. In a world where children are abused, women are devalued and men are ostracised - how can I keep nodding off to sleep?

God doesn't want me to sleep through life, to waste the precious time he has blessed me with on this earth. As a follower of Christ I am called to feed the hungry, give to the needy, to care for the orphans and widows, pray for my enemies and love what is good, pure and holy.

I am called not to snooze through my days on this earth, but to live each moment fully alive, to live in the fullness that comes through an intimate relationship with Christ. This intimacy can only evolve from spending time with God, through prayer, reading the Bible and fellowship with other Christians. Though sacrificing what my flesh desires, no longer hitting the snooze button and taking that extra time each morning to spend with God, rather than clinging onto those seemingly important extra five minutes of sleep. It is only through investing this time into a relationship with God that we can have the strength, determination and vision to help God bring wholeness to a world that cries out in pain.

So I say down with the snooze button. Let our days not be determined by complacency, saying its okay to sleep our days away. Rather, let our days be determined by the one who created time, who each morning makes the sun rise and each night, the sun set.