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I love elephants.  I have ever since I was a little girl.  While other (normal) girls pined after horses and dolphins, I’d look longingly at pictures of elephants and wish I could go on adventures as a secret agent riding my trusty elephant steed “Walter.”  As an adult, I had forgotten my passion for pachyderms.  And then, my kids and I discovered Dr. Seuss and Horton.  Horton Hears a Who and Horton Hatches the Egg are my two favorite Dr. Seuss books.  In Horton Hatches the Egg, Horton, the hapless elephant, promises to watch over the egg of the lazy irresponsible bird, Maysie.  When all manner of strife overwhelms him, Horton replies over and over again, “I said what I meant and I meant what I said.  An elephant’s faithful 100 percent.”  Horton freezes, almost drowns in torrential storms, is ridiculed and tormented by his “friends,” gets kidnapped and almost killed.  And his response, always, is, “I said what I meant and I meant what I said.  An elephant’s faithful 100 percent.”  And then he clings to that tiny little sapling of a tree bent under his weight, and he hangs on for dear life.  What he never does, though, is complain.

I gave up complaining for Lent.  Man alive, you think giving up sugar or smoking is hard?!  You know what I have found, though?  It has actually improved my prayer life.  Since I can’t complain to myself or others when I’m annoyed, I can only go to God.  And as I pray about my hurt feelings or “righteous” indignation, God comforts me.  His strength is allowing me to say, for maybe the 10,000^th time, “Ok, I will choose to act in love even though I kinda want to smack them!”  Sure, I’ve still smacked a few times…but far fewer than I would have before this Lenten season.

When we chose to follow Christ, we say to God, “Ok, I don’t know much about You, but I want to be who You want me to be.  I want to be like Jesus was, so help me figure out how to do that.”  Jesus was falsely accused, ridiculed, mocked, beaten, spit on, misquoted, misunderstood, criticized and murdered.  He has had people claim to speak for Him who don’t know him.  He has had wolves come in and devour the children He loves and died for.  He has had the worst atrocities in the history of humankind attributed to His name.  And, yet, there are no incidents recorded in Scripture of Him ever complaining.  But, He sure did pray.

As we are heading toward Easter this week, I wonder…what’s my egg?  What’s yours?  What is the thing that you think God has called you to do that just gets hard to deal with and makes you want to whine?  Sometimes, we have pretty good reason to whine.  It’s reasonable to whine when you get almost drowned in a storm or shot by hunters because you tried to help a tired momma bird who just needed a break.  It’s reasonable to whine when you lose your job or your kid breaks the rules for the 10,000^th time.  It’s reasonable to whine when someone takes advantage of you or ridicules you.  Or betrays you.

Whatever “un-Jesus-like” habits you may have, would you consider giving them up for the rest of this week?  Whether it’s no complaining, no criticizing, no whining, no hurting yourself, etc…would you try it with me for 1 week?  Here’s a site with daily prayers.  You can visit there daily and spend as much or as little time as you desire.  Or, every time you want to point to your egg and say, “But, this is…!” you can choose to just sit still and talk to God for a moment.

I said what I meant and I meant what I said.  An elephant’s faithful 100 percent.       -Horton

I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.                             -Jesus

- Written by Alicia Hemphill

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 9:22 am and is filed under Understanding Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.