Silent Wonder

Some days I wish I was a silent wonder.

There are some days that the things that come out of my mouth aren't really all that nice. In fact, I can have the tendency to be downright mean. And it's not that I'm completely mean spirited because I'm not (at least I don't think I am). But there are the days when I'm sitting around a table, listening to people talk about their co-workers or their "friends", about how obnoxious they are or how they talk too much, and instead of doing, well anything else, my first inclination is almost always to just jump right in.

Or there are the days when I say something just because I think it might get a laugh. And it doesn't. Or maybe it does but maybe only because it's the mean spirited, cruel-world stuff that everyone tends to laugh at whether they really think it's funny or not. 

And then there are the days when I've talked myself into a corner, and I get trapped there. "But didn't you say just the other day that...?" Oh how I hate hearing that phrase. It usually requires a reply like, "Well, sure but what I really meant was..." or "Are you sure that's what I said? You must have misunderstood". 

Those kinds of days, I wish I didn't speak at all. This is one of the many situations that leads me back to sweet, honest, analytical Paul. I chuckle in reading his thoughts on pretty much this very matter because I would imagine that my writings sound a lot like his... 

Romans7:15-24: For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! 

Can't you just here him talking to himself in his house at night the same you can hear me talking with myself? Crap, Paul. Why in the world did you keep talking to those guys and agreeing with them about that very not funny thing?! And why did I judge that woman shopping downtown today? I really shouldn't do that...why do I do that? I'm the very same way... Lindsey! Seriously! What made it okay to ask about that confidential situation in a very public setting today? And could you have been any more insensitive to that student? What is wrong with you? 

Ahh, but by grace, we are all works in progress. I am not perfect. And as much as I strive for perfection, sin is still at work in me. It's pretty hard to shake a sin nature (okay, so it's impossible while I'm alive, I know). So, I ask for forgiveness sincerely from God and people, I pray for strength to be more in tune with God's nature and far less in tune with sin's, and that's what I can do. And I will probably say something stupid tomorrow because I'm not actually a silent wonder. And for this world and this life, I'm just going to have to live with that.