By: Pastor Jarren Rogers

Annie and I have a dishwasher, but I hardly ever use it. 

I’ve always believed that if you are rinsing off your dishes to throw them in the dishwasher, you are doing half the work already! Just add some soap to that process and be done with it. 

Okay, maybe it’s not that simple.

Regardless, Annie is the only one who uses the dishwasher in our home. When it’s my turn to do the dishes, I wash them manually, and then set them out to dry.

Last night, we had small group at our house and so we had more dirty dishes than we would normally. Being the good husband I am, I took it upon myself to allow my bride to go bed, and I stayed up and washed them. 

It took me around twenty minutes. Afterward, I headed off to bed, and when I came into the room, Annie asked me, “Did you dry all of those dishes with a towel?”

I looked at her, quizzically, “Why would I do that? We have a drying rack. I just threw them all on there.”

“Jarren, there’s no way all of those dishes would fit in that tiny drying rack unless you stacked them in a big pile.”

I looked at her. 

She sighed, “…Are they going to fall over?”

I shook my head, “There’s no way. I’m a pro at this.”

The next morning, I came down into the kitchen, and Annie was standing next to the sink admiring the great, jumbling, tottering pile of dishes drying off in the rack. 

She pointed, “I could never do that. How do they not just fall over?”

So many of us pile the dishes of our lives in much the same way. We juggle so many things: responsibilities, emotions, stresses, burdens, and difficulties. We stack them one on top of the other, attempting to keep our life in a precarious balance.

And many times, our dish stacking is visible to those around us. They can see we are struggling and bearing heavy loads. But when they express concern, we shrug it off, “I’m a pro.”

Desperately trying to keep our life in equilibrium becomes the new normal. However, behind the scenes, it wears us down–bit by bit–until eventually all of our plates will come crashing down.

Anxiety and stress come when we hover over our unstable and tottering stack of dishes. We feel we must keep our eyes and our energy locked on it, ensuring it does not tumble. It keeps us up at night because we are worried that soon it will all come crashing down. 

On the flip side, peace and true balance come when we center our lives, not around our stacks of dishes, but around the person of Jesus Christ. We find such freedom and assurance when we realize we don’t have to worry about it all coming crashing down because we have someone who is lifting us up! 

Stop fixating on your piles of dishes. Instead, fix your eyes on Jesus. He is ready to offer you overwhelming peace and assurance. 

Then, you can finally quit worrying about your dishes crashing to the ground and place them in the hands of Christ.