Those Softener Sheets

My mom added fabric softener to the laundry the old-fashioned way: standing over the washer as its rinse cycle began and pouring bright blue liquid into the rising water from the cap of the softener bottle. When I began doing laundry on my own, the method had gotten a lot neater: you simply tore a small softener sheet from a roll and tossed it with your wet clothes into the dryer.

These days the sheets are folded and packaged precut, not perforated, and a sheet in the dryer leaves your clothes smelling fresh and clean.

Plucking two softener sheets from the box and tossing them into the dryer after my damp clothes, I remembered the old way and how much trouble it seemed to be. Listening for the washer’s rinse-cycle sounds demanded attentiveness, and pouring the liquid into the premeasured cap did too. Screwing the cap back on to the bottle usually required wiping up the blue liquid that dribbled down the side. It was at least a three-step process; now it’s only one. But the result is much the same.

So somewhere between the washer and the dryer, I wondered what unexamined efficiencies I’ve worked into my spiritual life. What three-step processes have I collapsed into a single toss for the sake of time or user-friendliness or both? Have handy prayer acronyms or formulaic discipleship strategies made me any softer or sharper or deeper—or any more trusting or caring or wise?

I’m not knocking efficiency. But I don’t want to be fooled into thinking domestic advances apply more widely than they should. Conditioning a heart (as opposed to a pair of scratchy Levis) takes time. Plenty of it. And putting the Word of God into my life requires standing over countless “cycles” with the Book in hand, waiting for its Author to show me what it means and why it matters deeply.

Changed lives don’t result from offhand applications of holiness. A quick tumble with the Word is not the same as being steeped in it. And where my heart is concerned, it’s the process—messy, inconvenient, and time-consuming as it is—that makes me more like Jesus.

The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

Philippians 4:9, NASB

From the book