Refrigerator Faith

I walked into the kitchen this morning and saw a note my wife, Cretia had written and stuck on the fridge. It was about, interestingly enough, all the things on our refrigerator. What was there. What it all means to us.

Why did she write it? I have no idea. Some devotional exercise, maybe. But nevertheless, I believe the Holy Spirit used her and that simple note to teach me something very profound.

Most of us like to think we can tell a lot about someone by the things stuck on their fridge. And maybe so.

On ours, we happen to have some pictures, drawings from the kids, recipes, newspaper clippings, a notepad, coupons, a chore list for Emma, lots of little magnets, lady bugs, dragonflies, princesses. And these are all things that for the most part, we use or look to, almost daily. Some have a deep emotional attachment and some are just stuck up there. I don’t exactly know why.

Now what does that say about us?

We have friends whose refrigerators don’t have a thing on them. Nothing. They have kids. Pets. Jobs. Lives. But nothing on the fridge. Why is that?

I’m not sure. I’m just asking.

Then we have other friends who have a metric ton of junk and 325,000 apple, banana, Sponge Bob and insurance company magnets stuck all over theirs.

What does that mean?

Again, I don’t know. But probably not as much as we’d like to believe it does.

Still, if you walk into someone’s home, let’s agree that most of us believe you really can tell what’s important to a family by what they have on the ice box. That the front of the refrigerator is a snapshot of “where their treasure lies”.

For example, when I see our friends who have the bare fridge, it doesn’t mean that they’re boring or that they don’t do anything. As a matter of fact, they’re exactly the opposite. But that might be the impression you get when you see the fridge…if you didn’t know them and if you believe in the whole refrigerator-mirrors-your-treasure theory.

Take our other friends who have the cluttered fridge. The fact that their refrigerator door is cluttered doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re messy. Actually they aren’t at all. But people would probably think that, if that’s all they knew about them.

What does all this mean? Well, at the end of it all, it made me start to think in general, about how something looks on the outside and what those appearances makes people think. Real or imagined. And specifically, how that relates to our walk with God.

There are a lot of analogies we could use there. But what I want to focus on is what I like to call “refrigerator faith”. I think refrigerator faith is a pretty good mirror for what Jesus says to us in Matthew 5:16.

He says, “In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

If your life was available for the world to see, like the front of a refrigerator, what would people think when they saw it? Would they see Jesus? What would others see about you? What would your refrigerator say to the world?

Better yet, what do you want it to say?

Father, as I go through my day today, help me to arrange the front of my own “refrigerator” so that when people look at my life, they get a sense of my faith in You, my love for You. Let people see what’s important to me. And please let that be, You. In Christ, Amen.