The Loving Thing to Do

I was emptying the dishwasher.  There seemed to be a lot more items in it than usual.

Very carefully I stacked the big plates, followed by some smaller plates.  Then, I put some bowls on top of that and then topped it with some cups.  The stack was huge, but I was determined to carry it to where it went all at once.  I picked them up and shuffled towards the cabinet where they were kept.

Suddenly, I caught my toe on some unseen crack in the floor.  I tried to catch my balance, but it was too late...

Crash!

I opened my eyes.  I was lying in bed with not a plate to be seen around me.

Bang!

My beautiful wife seemed to be doing something very noisy with a fly swatter.  I looked at my alarm clock.  It was 11:15 pm.

"What are you doing?"  I asked Elaine.

"There were some very noisy flies in our room," she said.  "They were keeping me awake."  Bang!  "Got one!"  She said triumphantly.

Now, to be honest, I hadn't noticed the sound of the flies at all, but I sure did notice the noise produced by the fly swatter.

There is a verse in I Corinthians 13 that says "Charity suffers long and is kind..." 

Maybe I was being long suffering as I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but probably not.  The loving thing to do would have been to arise and help my wife wage war on the house flies.

I suppose there are times that loving thing is just to do nothing, but far more often the loving thing to do is to try to meet the seen need.  Even such a need as trying to kill house flies on a sleep Saturday evening.