“Do What You Can’t”
11/27/2018
I Was Thinking…
“Just do what you can!” This is a phrase that I have heard in a variety of circumstances across the years. As a stock clerk at Colonial Food Stores, Mr. Holston, the grocery store manager would say to us “You won’t be able to stock all the shelves tonight so ‘just do what you can’.” Mrs. Jones my 10th grade biology teacher was notorious for ‘pop quizzes’ in which she would say to the class “You will not get all the answers correct so ‘do the best that you can’. I would hear from my parents either ‘do what you can’ or ‘do the best that you can’ with regards to many things in those important years of childhood and adolescence. Their grace was an encouragement on many occasions.
However, with Advent beginning this Sunday I am offering a challenge that we “do what we can’t”. Advent is the beginning of the Christian year. What better time is there than at the beginning to decide to ‘do what we can’t’. After all, if we only ‘do what we can’…well, where is the faith in ‘doing what we can’? So let’s prepare to ‘do what we can’t’. Advent is the season of preparation for the birth of a king. Advent is the preparation and anticipation of the impossible becoming possible. The world didn’t expect a baby born in a manger to be a savior…a new kind of king. The world expected a messiah on a white horse with power to make all their pre-determined wishes come true. They never imagined a messiah surrounded by hay and the aroma of cattle. Why…that kind of a messiah ‘can’t’ change the world and offer the hope of salvation. That’s impossible. That’s what the world thought!
I saw the phrase ‘do what you can’t’ on a Galaxy phone advertisement recently. It started my mind to thinking…Isn’t that our opportunity as faith-walking, love sharing, hope living, people of God…to ‘do what we can’t’? If we only do what we can then we are doing only what we can! But if we attempt by faith to ‘do what we can’t’…then maybe just maybe this Advent will take us to a different level of preparation in order to worship the newborn king.
What is it you’d like to do but feel like you can’t do it? Perhaps that is the place God wishes to show you what God can do. ‘Do what you can’t’! May your advent be full of discoveries of new possibilities straight from heaven!
Always Thinking…
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