Do the next thing…
After I had dinner with my son a couple of weeks ago, I did something I was taught to do years ago….do the next thing.
Yes, that simple.
Do the next thing.
My son and I both had lamented to each other that we were in weird places with our faith. Just dry. Or something. Just off.
It was kind of refreshing that he understood exactly what I was feeling. We could almost finish each others sentences as we were expressing our thoughts.
I went home after our dinner and I remembered what my old friend, and mentor, Elisabeth Elliot taught me..
Do the next thing.
Elisabeth and I really aren’t friends, although I wish we were! She passed away a few years ago, but I think of her as a friend. A mentor. A teacher. An aunt that you just love to be around. That is Elisabeth to me.
She wrote in one of her books about the awful death of her husband Jim. How she didn’t even know how she would go on. She had a little baby at the time and her life revolved around Jim and their mission work.
Here is an excerpt of what she wrote..
When I went back to my jungle station after the death of my first husband, Jim Elliot, I was faced with many confusions and uncertainties. I had a good many new roles, besides that of being a single parent and a widow. I was alone on a jungle station that Jim and I had manned together. I had to learn to do all kinds of things, which I was not trained or prepared in any way to do. It was a great help to me simply to do the next thing.
Elisabeth goes on to say that she learned that from an old Saxon poem from an English parsonage…
“Do it immediately, do it with prayer, do it reliantly, casting all care. Do it with reverence, tracing His hand who placed it before thee with earnest command. Stayed on omnipotence, safe ‘neath His wing, leave all resultings, do the next thing.”
Although Elisabeth was in a much more dire situation than I found myself in eating chips and salsa with my first born, I still needed to apply those words.
I believed that I would be okay, that my faith would rise up again. However, it was the part in the “mean time”, the “waiting”, the “weird” place that I found to be stuck and miserable in.
I took Elisabeth’s words to heart that night.
I went home, I began writing. And writing. And writing .
I began to do the next thing.
In this case, it was to write, to journal.
The very next day my son called to check on me.
I told him I was feeling much better. The dark and looming clouds were lifting.
Joseph excitedly responded, “OH, wow, that is awesome, Mom! Why do you think you are doing so much better?”
“I did the next thing. Simple and true.”
He shared with me some of the “next things” he was doing and we both marveled at the simplicity of this exercise.
Doing the next thing…it gets us moving. We remain stuck unless we move.
Sometimes our belief system needs to come out through the application of our hands. Whether it is writing, doing that load of laundry for your family, cooking that meal, cleaning those dishes, paying those bills…
Whatever the next thing is…
Do it.
Staying in the dark, under the covers, in our head…that is where the enemy wants us.
“The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but Jesus came so that we could have life and life to the fullest.” John 10:10
Jesus beckons us to the Light. To keep moving. To do the next thing.
In the words of Jesus…
“Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.” Matthew 7:12
There is that word again…Do.
It is the action, the movement, the do….that is what brings it full circle.
We can think great things and faithful things and holy things…but when we use these hands to practice those things, we find our purpose again.
“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, working with your hands…” 1 Thessalonians 4:11
Here, we see it again.
Are you stuck? Are you in a place that feels dark and weird and joy-less?
Do the next thing.
And the next. And the next. And the next.
You will discover the application of your hands doing the next thing, sheds light in those dark shadows.
lt may take time, but you are taking steps forward. Walking by faith and not by sight.
doing the next thing,
jill
