More (Turtle)

Currently listening to: Only You by DCB This week was parent teacher conferences at Carter's school. We had a great time talking with his teacher who is doing an amazing job. It is still somewhat strange to go to those things. Makes me feel as old as I actually am.

While there the teacher noticed I was a bit distracted by the class pet. His name is Slipee. Actually I have no idea how they spell it but I choose that spelling because it reminds me of a slurpee of which I am very fond.

9 years ago a student brought Carter's teacher this turtle. 9 years ago, and he still has it. It hangs out in the class and according to Carter "During the day he just lays there and stares at us. He doesn't really do anything cool." Not a bad gig compared to the demise of many of his kinfolk I've seen smeared across the road near the school.

Getting to the point though, Slipee has a pretty decent life going on. Over the summer though, Carter's teacher was beginning to feel guilty that he wasn't providing a nice enough home for the old Slipster. He did some research and then went out and bought him an MTV Cribs worthy pad complete with just about everything they say turtles desire. Carter's teacher pulled Slipee out of the shanty he was living in and dropped him in paradise.

Funny thing is, Slipee just sat there. Not excited, not curious just not enough to really do anything. Long story short, Slipee liked what he had going on. Carter's teacher took it all back and today you can find Slipee chillin' in his simple abode.

You could take this story a number of ways and since this is my blog I choose to take it this way. I know you could role with the whole, "isn't it awesome how content Slipee is?! We should all be so grateful for our surroundings!". I'm not saying that.

I was hanging out with a bunch of friends last week and we were talking about Ephesians because that's what we got to do. We landed in Ephesians 3 where Paul is praying for the church that it would grasp God's power and love and live with a desire for more. Not in some greedy I need as much as the next guy way. More like in a this is flipping cool, we should do this more often kind of way. Ephesians 3:20-21 is all about how God can do more than our turtle sized brains can dream up. We've all thought about this verse I'm sure and normally our application is, "I want a BMW so if God can do more....." I don't think that's it though.

My point? Glad you asked. Surprised you lasted this long. My point is I think we confuse comfort for blessing. We get so bent out of shape when our status quo gets messed with that I think we have a father who wants to pull us out of what we've got and drop us in something awesome but when he tries we often sit there uninterested and wishing we had our old stuff back.

Could it be that there are varying degrees of better? Is it possible that we would settle for pretty good when face melting awesome is ours for the taking? What's the more that God is or wants to give you?

Or maybe I took a dumb story about a turtle way too far......