He Doesn't Care About Efficiency.

I went to my house in Salt Lake last night.  I was doing some laundry...and the washing machine broke mid cycle.  This was especially annoying to me because I happened to be washing my pillows.  So I hauled the soaking, soapy load to the bathtub and finished them Salvadoran style: by hand.  But my weak squeezing of the pillows was NO comparison to two high speed spin cycles, and they were still excessively soggy by the time I moved them to the dryer.

I ran them for 3 dry cycles and the last one finished while I slept.  I was really happy that they were getting dry, I'd had my doubts:)  Then in the morning, a quite mysterious thing happened.
I opened the dryer, and one of my pillows was *gasp* gone.  I don't know where it went.  I don't know why the pillow thief chose to take one pillow (the Calvin Klein one of course,) and leave the other.  I don't know who did it between the hours of midnight and eight.  And I don't know why.  I do know that I now need to go pillow shopping.  And that I wasted a LOT of time, energy and effort last night.

I HATE waste.  It makes me sick.  So much of life is wasteful.  And it somehow seems like the poorer and more stressed you are, the less you can afford efficiency.  When I was asking my dad if he knew anything about the pillow heist, I found myself explaining it to him in my anger by sarcastically yelling saying,

"I LOVE things that FRUSTRATE me because they give me a chance to ...grow."

The Lord is pretty forgiving.  And merciful.  And comforting.  I've found if you give him a gram of effort, he'll take away your anger and fear and replace them with peace and understanding.  Of course, it took a while for all my anger to fade, but by the end of that sentence, I could already feel myself calming down and realizing sarcasm wasn't necessary, because what I was saying was actually true.  (Well, maybe not the love part, but) frustrating things help us grow.  It can make me feel guilty when I don't do things the most efficient way.  Because I hate waste.  It makes me feel like an unwise steward, non-thrifty, and stupid. But despite our efforts, life is rarely efficient.

But something dawned on me today.  The Lord doesn't care about efficiency.  He doesn't care about convenience.  He's in the business of changing hearts, how can he?:)  Patience and efficiency are pretty opposite.  Patience and convenience are pretty opposite.  I know the scriptures tell us over and over to be patient, but I don't recall being told to do things the most efficient way.  Is it efficient to talk to a child?  Is it efficient to give a drug addict time and chances?  No.  It's not efficient, and it's not convenient.  But Christ doesn't much value those things.  Those are things our natural man values, because they allow us to make more of our time.  Patience allows God to make more of us.  Patience helps us allow those around us to make more of themselves.

Update: There's also always a silver lining.  My new pillows are super comfy!