Broken Umbrellas

Yesterday my daughters broke their umbrella….really broke it. I could hear them in the other room talking about how they would have daddy fix it when he got home and that it was no big deal. Hours later, Mark walked in the door, and still fresh on their minds, they came running with their mangled metal and fabric. “Daddy, could you fix this?” They both chirped up at him.

Mark looked at that umbrella and said, “No, girls, there are just some things that Daddy can’t fix and this is one of them. It’s not fixable.”

Sometimes I wonder if we go through life like that. We treat our relationships and our values with little care and then we hope that God can come by and fix it all for us. I wonder if our heavenly Father, in great love, looks at us sometimes and says, “There are some things that Daddy can’t fix and this is one of them.”

Don’t get me wrong, I think we serve a God powerful enough to fix anything for us. However, I also know that we serve a God wise enough to allow us to feel the consequences of our brokenness and NOT to fix it for us. I think we look around in shock when our friendships are a mess and our sin is exposed, but God isn’t waving around the magic fairy wand that fixes it all. He’s not a genie…He’s God. And He’s not afraid to allow us to feel the weight of our indiscretions.

What my girls should have done is to use the umbrella appropriately. They shouldn’t have had it upside down and they really shouldn’t have been stepping in it. They should have been using it to guard against the upcoming fall rain, but they chose to step outside of that boundary and now they have a problem. It’s not Mark’s fault for being unable to fix it. It’s their fault for breaking it.

In our home we believe in grace, so at some point we’ll probably buy the girls a new umbrella, but in the meantime we are going to let them feel the raindrops of consequence for a while. You may be in that season where it’s raining on your parade. What in your life is upside down and broken? Have you asked yourself why you are so mad at God for not fixing what you treated poorly?

I suggest you take the punishment and give the credit where credit is due…to yourself. I know that’s what I’m trying to get my girls to understand.