“Mom, you’re overreacting!” I’d expressed loud, deep annoyance that he’d drunk the last of the milk the night before and hadn’t told anyone the jug was empty. As a result, I’d gotten up at 5:30 a.m., tired and headachy, and there was no milk for my coffee. This is not a good way to start the day.
“You’re right,” I admitted, briskly, “And you were still wrong not to replace the milk!” The one advantage to my crankiness was that dealing with an un-caffeinated mother is a pretty strong incentive to avoid repeating the mistake.
After someone hastily trekked out to buy milk, and I got my cup of coffee, life improved. My neurons began firing again, and I thought about why I’d gotten so annoyed. Part of it was an unexpected change in routine when I was sleepy. Part of it was that I want my son to think of others and not just himself. And then there was the truth that sometimes little offenses are disproportionately aggravating because they are so easy to avoid. Honestly, it doesn’t take much effort to say, “Hey, Mom, we’re out of milk!”
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That thought reminded me of something I’d read long ago, that little sins are in some ways the worst of all, precisely because they’re so easy to overcome. We are quite capable of not-saying the snarky comeback, not-passing-on the tidbit of questionable gossip, not-griping to the checkout clerk about the length of the line. It takes almost no effort at all.
I considered my son’s mistake and decided we all have a certain number of empty milk jugs in our lives, situations that really take very little to fix. It seems like a worthwhile gift to Jesus this season: to challenge myself to identify a few easily-remedied situations, and put those fixes into action.
