The ugly dinner plate

Everyone needs a "Wayne" in their life. He is an elder in my former church and he isn't a peer. He is almost 80 and has been in and out of the heart hospital more times than I can remember. He is also a straight shooter. He can cut to the chase, kindly, better than anyone I know. He is also a good story teller when he wants to make a point.

I met with Wayne several weeks ago after a particularly discouraging episode with a church member. The only thing "getting it done" according to this member was my character, everything else was a disappointment. I received it as best I could and felt like a pretty good failure when it was all said and done. Is that ordinary?

Wayne listened to me say, "I feel like a failure," and recounted the following story:

As part of our move from one home to another about thirty years ago, I was helping Carol to unpack and put things away in the kitchen of our new home. As I opened a box containing every day dishes, I saw a dinner plate that was quite unlike most of the other plates. It was ugly!

It was a cheap dime store melamine plastic plate that had been finger painted by our son, Ken, then glazed, and given to his mother for Mother's Day. Ken was eight or nine years old at that time. He had printed his date of birth of birth as being in September when it actually occurred in July. He had started to draw what was now an indistinguishable picture, apparently made a mistake, and scratched back and forth through the image over and over until it was obliterated. It was definitely the work of a young child with very little artistic talent.

I said, "Carol, why on earth do you keep moving this ugly plate?" Her reply was, "Because Ken gave it to me." I said, "So? Not only is it ugly, he has completely forgotten about it by now. He sure wouldn't miss it if you threw it away. Why is it so important to you, especially considering the way it looks?"

I will never forget her response. She said, "I don't keep it for the plate. I keep it to remind me of the love he had for me and his desire to please me. His wanting to please me was what pleased me, not the plate itself. Every time I notice that plate I don't see the plate, I see the look on Ken's face when he handed it to me, eager to see my response for all the love and effort he put into it."

God got my attention that day. I had spent much of my life wanting to please my Heavenly Father but always ending up frustrated, knowing that most of my efforts seemed to produce nothing more than another 'ugly dinner plate.' The more I worked at becoming a pleasing child to my Father, the bigger and uglier those plates seemed to become.

I had never once realized that He, like my wife with her beloved son, is pleased beyond understanding with my desire to please Him. He knows that the desire in my heart to plese Him is genuine, and therefore the product of my activity is totally inconsequential unless it ends up bringing sin into either my life or someone else's life.

The one thing that pleases God is our desire to please Him! He has stacks and stacks of ugly dinner plates on display, not for what they are worth and not because of their beauty, but because they remind Him of our love and desire to please Him!

That's how Wayne encouraged me that day. "Is your greatest desire to please God?" He asked. "Yes," I said. "Then give God your ugly dinner plates and know that He is pleased with you."