God's Vacuum Cleaner Giveaway

Courtney and I have a vacuum cleaner that my parents bought for me a couple years ago. It is blue like a race car, but it is missing the big engine. Despite its noticeable lack of power, it did the job for my once a..... for the one or two times I cleaned. After marriage I was informed by my wife that the sweeper was not satisfactory.

We have a pug named Murray. He is adorable and hilarious. He also sheds like it's going out of style. I'm pretty sure if Jesus were around today and wanted to talk about the power of a bunch of individuals in community he would use Murray's vacuum clogging hair as an example. "You see, each of you are all like an individual hair from Murray. Soon many of you will fall to the ground but it will not be in vain. You will clog the cheap underpowered vacuum cleaner of the enemy."

At least once a month my wife informs me that the vacuum is broken. She tried to clean it out, it won't work -we better get a new one. Once I have it running again she pretends to be grateful that it is alive.

A couple of months ago she was particularly miffed about the whole vacuum thing. Actually we were both feeling the pains (if you can call them that) of not having enough stuff, or at least the bare necessities (if you can call them that) of life in the United States. After a bit of grumbling we both started feeling sticky and gross. After months of general contentment in our circumstances we were becoming something whiny and disgusting.

Enter God.

After God did a little whispering -which we didn't notice till we were done arguing, we realized we were keeping a part of our dirty hearts from Him. We had talked to him about a lot of the boulders,"Dad get rid of selfishness in us (marriage is good for this), open our eyes to what you want us to do, thank you that we have a place to live and food." The pebbles were starting to blister our feet, but they were petty and should be put up with like good frugal content Christians.

So we had a little come to Jesus moment around the table. A 3x5 card became the alter on which we sacrificed/asked for the things that were fighting for our thoughts. At the top of the list was a new vacuum cleaner then a few other items including a trip to Maine for our anniversary. We both felt a little guilty asking God for such things. We both figured he had bigger more spiritual things for us to pray for.

In the following weeks something beautiful happened. I didn't hear Courtney complain once about the vacuum. In fact we talked about squeezing it in the budget but she stopped me and said it was unnecessary. Thankfulness for what we did have seemed to replace (most of the time) the discontentment. The list was inevitably buried under wedding invitations, recipes, and due bills; dismissed from our thoughts but not God's.

This morning I took my in-laws old Dyson vacuum cleaner to get fixed. They had bought a new one before realizing the old one was still under warranty. They are giving it to us. Not only is it a top of the line vacuum cleaner (probably more expensive than I would ever want Courtney to buy without an altercation), it is a pet hair edition. We were reminded again of the list.

The vacuum wasn't the only item checked off the list, in fact it wasn't even the biggest. A few weeks ago, Courtney and I were sitting in the Denver airport on our way to Oregon for my brother's wedding, waiting for our plane. While I sat there oblivious to anything but Muse in my headphones Courtney heard them announce that the flight was overloaded. She jumped into action and got us $800 in flight vouchers for an extra three hours of waiting in Denver. Those vouchers are going to make it possible for us to go back to Maine next year for our 2 year anniversary.

I feel the need to interject a disclaimer. I really do understand that God has much more for us and desires much more from us than vacations and vacuum cleaners. I think He would rather give us something that changes our hearts than make us comfortable. There is a lot of comfort ahead for those who follow Jesus to it. But as much as my frugal Mennonite background wants God to be a frugal Mennonite, God often seems to speak to us in ways we will understand, even if that seems to bend toward my materialistic North American mindset, even when we are not exactly a prime example of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

There are a lot of ways I want to resolve all of this, and make it tidy, but really that's not possible. My mind is too small to tidy up God, at some point I just have to accept who He is and what he does, and be thankful in all things. I am pretty sure this is from God, because I'm feeling more excited about the fact that God is tapping us on the shoulder than the fact that we got a new vacuum cleaner and a trip to Maine. Honestly I think that's what he wanted anyway.