The REAL Man with a Plan
I didn't intend to come up for air with the sitcom silliness of Man With A Plan on my mind. Such an outcome tempts me to take another breath and to dive back into David Copperfield, that I've also been feeding on, to present something which will feed my readers, and my ego, with more highbrow material. What's next? Will the sidekick on the show played by Kevin Nealon as so obtuse as to make Matt LeBlanc's character seem relatively smart, get the microphone and the spotlight ?
Nevertheless, here we are. In the most recent episode I saw, Leblanc's title character Adam Burns finds out that the bargain pastor he hired many years ago contrary to his fiancée's instructions was a fraud with a gambling addiction. For the length of the show, we get to skewer his cheapskate ways. Though currently prosperous, he insists on getting multiple uses out of portions of coffee grounds designed for daily disposal. He indicts himself as a cheapskate when he opens up a drawer full of napkins taken from various restaurants for home use.
Are these rimshots a prompt to serious consideration? Unexpectedly, yes. Toward the end, the show shifts as Adam reminds his wife of leaner times. He draws her attention back to 2008 when the new construction he depends on dried up for 10 months. Yet because Adam saves rather than spends, he says his family stayed in their own home. The laughable and irritating cheapskate can also be a good steward to a good purpose.
My own inner cheapskate didn't need multimedia defense. He is strong, even dominant, enough already. He and my inner pessimist have been in a strong position since I lost my job a few months ago. If my wife and I had lived up to the full extent of our means, they remind me along with Adam from the show, our troubles would be much worse. What are the next 10 words, though, after that plausible self-defense? When the dry season is over, what then? Will I expend the next 10 words to myself, or spend the next 10 years of life's incremental decisions, hoarding napkins and squeezing every possible use out of coffee grounds? Will my relationships, especially at work, be under similarly constant cynical scrutiny? When the worst happens, for how long do we over-apply its lessons? What fuel for ongoing optimism do we bypass in such a closed off life?
Pastor Charles Spurgeon, gone to his imperishable reward, speaks against such tightness of being in a timely fashion today. In this morning's installment of his timeless Morning and Evening devotional. His verse for this morning is Isaiah 33:21 which insists, "The glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams." Spurgeon lodges the point of the Scripture in our hearts when he indicts our default to self-defensive worrying in phrasing that stands out all the more for its 19th century quaintness. "If you are straitened you are not straitened in Him, but in your own bowels." If we come away from an encounter, he says, more reliant on our prideful or anxious ways of thinking, we have learned the wrong lesson and need to do some reconstruction within. Matt LeBlanc's contractor character can't help with that kind of reconstruction.
If Spurgeon can convict me, and any who similarly crowd under the label of believers in Christ's grace but also tend toward pessimism and anxiety, the show Man with a Plan helps us with gracious application in our horizontal relationships with other humans. The same guy we would deride as cheap, we can also often commend as a disciplined spender who might be halfway to resting in the Gospel because he does not seek immediate satisfaction or satiation in this world's delights. What strikes us disagreeably as somebody's pride in appearances whenever WE are inconvenienced may also be an expression of the gift of hospitality's urge to make others comfortable, or of the same Scriptural discipline that calls an owner to know the state of his flocks. Appropriately called to question where we over-learn, we can enter new days, new challenges, new relationships with a determination to see FIRST in somebody else's distinctives whatever point us to Christ. I'm not sure He would keep a stash of restaurant napkins, though.
Nevertheless, here we are. In the most recent episode I saw, Leblanc's title character Adam Burns finds out that the bargain pastor he hired many years ago contrary to his fiancée's instructions was a fraud with a gambling addiction. For the length of the show, we get to skewer his cheapskate ways. Though currently prosperous, he insists on getting multiple uses out of portions of coffee grounds designed for daily disposal. He indicts himself as a cheapskate when he opens up a drawer full of napkins taken from various restaurants for home use.
Are these rimshots a prompt to serious consideration? Unexpectedly, yes. Toward the end, the show shifts as Adam reminds his wife of leaner times. He draws her attention back to 2008 when the new construction he depends on dried up for 10 months. Yet because Adam saves rather than spends, he says his family stayed in their own home. The laughable and irritating cheapskate can also be a good steward to a good purpose.
My own inner cheapskate didn't need multimedia defense. He is strong, even dominant, enough already. He and my inner pessimist have been in a strong position since I lost my job a few months ago. If my wife and I had lived up to the full extent of our means, they remind me along with Adam from the show, our troubles would be much worse. What are the next 10 words, though, after that plausible self-defense? When the dry season is over, what then? Will I expend the next 10 words to myself, or spend the next 10 years of life's incremental decisions, hoarding napkins and squeezing every possible use out of coffee grounds? Will my relationships, especially at work, be under similarly constant cynical scrutiny? When the worst happens, for how long do we over-apply its lessons? What fuel for ongoing optimism do we bypass in such a closed off life?
Pastor Charles Spurgeon, gone to his imperishable reward, speaks against such tightness of being in a timely fashion today. In this morning's installment of his timeless Morning and Evening devotional. His verse for this morning is Isaiah 33:21 which insists, "The glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams." Spurgeon lodges the point of the Scripture in our hearts when he indicts our default to self-defensive worrying in phrasing that stands out all the more for its 19th century quaintness. "If you are straitened you are not straitened in Him, but in your own bowels." If we come away from an encounter, he says, more reliant on our prideful or anxious ways of thinking, we have learned the wrong lesson and need to do some reconstruction within. Matt LeBlanc's contractor character can't help with that kind of reconstruction.
If Spurgeon can convict me, and any who similarly crowd under the label of believers in Christ's grace but also tend toward pessimism and anxiety, the show Man with a Plan helps us with gracious application in our horizontal relationships with other humans. The same guy we would deride as cheap, we can also often commend as a disciplined spender who might be halfway to resting in the Gospel because he does not seek immediate satisfaction or satiation in this world's delights. What strikes us disagreeably as somebody's pride in appearances whenever WE are inconvenienced may also be an expression of the gift of hospitality's urge to make others comfortable, or of the same Scriptural discipline that calls an owner to know the state of his flocks. Appropriately called to question where we over-learn, we can enter new days, new challenges, new relationships with a determination to see FIRST in somebody else's distinctives whatever point us to Christ. I'm not sure He would keep a stash of restaurant napkins, though.
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