Do You Know What Time It Is?

Do you ever feel like you're under immense pressure.  You know, like you're being crushed?  (That's an uplifting way to start a new Blog post, isn't it?).  But I mean, really. Sometimes it just feels like I'm in a grist mill.  You know what that is?  For the uninitiated, grist is grain that has been separated from chaff in preparation for grinding.  It can also be grain that has already been ground at a...you guessed it...grist mill.  

More about grist from Wikipedia you ask?  Grist can be ground into meal or flour, depending on how coarsely it is ground.  Maize (what you call corn) made into grist is called grits (thank God for grits), and corn meal when it is finely ground.  Wheat, oats, barley, and buckwheat are also ground and sifted into flour and farina.  Grist is also used in brewing and distillation to make mash ('hic!).  

John the Baptist told the crowds that pressed around him that he was not the Messiah.  He said, "I baptize you with water; but someone is coming soon...(who will) baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire". And then he said this, "He is ready to separate the chaff from the wheat with his winnowing fork.  Then he will clean up the threshing area, gathering the wheat into his barn but burning the chaff with never-ending fire".  

All right!  More verses for my refrigerator!  So after that - and this is funny, to me - Luke 3:18 says, "John used many such warnings as he announced the Good News to people".  I'm sorry, being separated with a pitch fork, tossed into a never-ending fire...this is Good News?  Only if you're the wheat hanging out in the barn.  That is (dum-dum-dum) until you realize your next stop is the grist mill!  

All kidding aside, wheat isn't much good sitting in a pile in the barn. It isn't really very useful until it's ground into something life-sustaining.  That's the pressure I'm talking about.  This crushing business for me is not just a discomfort with the things the world calls good and right and a desire to be separated from it.  It's an unbearable awareness of how stiff-necked and proud and set-in-my-ways I can be.  I need to be ground into fine flour that God can use to feed hungry people.  People hungry not just for spiritual food, but natural as well.  I believe it is my own discomfort with the plight and poverty of others and personal pride in my own accomplishments that God desires to grind out of me.  How 'bout you?  

Together, let's allow God to pulverize us (painful as that may sound) into something he can use. May we all become increasingly willing to be broken of our own stubbornness, pride and high opinion of ourselves.  How?  John the Baptist says, "If you have two shirts, give one to the poor. If you have food, share it with those who are hungry".  He encourages us to prove by the way we live, not just the words we use, that we have repented of our sins and turned to God. I think these things are connected.  

Get out of the barn.  Get into the mill.  Start living the high life... 

It's Mill-(AGHHHH!) Time!