Oatmeal and my hard heart

I am not a morning person.  I have had to develop some coping mechanisms just to survive the craziness of getting a child off to school and handling three other little ones who can’t completely feed or dress themselves without assistance yet.  For me, that coping mechanism is oatmeal.  It’s easy to prepare, it’s nutritious, and I have made it often enough that I think I could do it in my sleep. . in fact, I probably have.

But there’s something I’ve noticed with oatmeal- when the kids are done eating if I rinse the dishes right away, it’s a simple clean-up process.  If I let it sit for just ten minutes, that oatmeal dries into some kind of paste that the Israelites probably could have used to make the pyramids.  And it’s in those moments where I’m paying for my sin of laziness by scrubbing down another oatmeal pot that I am reminded of my many other sins.

When my conscience first bothers me about an issue it is so important to come immediately to the Lord and deal with it.  If that means an apology to my spouse or a change in my attitude or behaviors, the faster I’m able to make those changes, the easier it is.  But when I give my sins some time to fester in my heart or I let bitterness take root, then it becomes a real trial to try and make changes.  Just like that pot of oatmeal, it’s going to take a lot of consistent work to get my heart clean again.

So next time I feel that prick of my conscience to deal with an issue, I don’t want to respond with defensiveness or laziness, I want to make the changes I need to right away before it turns into hardness in my heart.  And tomorrow morning when I make oatmeal, I want to deal with that hardness right away, too.