I could really use a butler. The slow erosion of household cleanliness standards with each subsequent child began this suspicion which was only deeply confirmed after a few seasons of Downton Abbey.

Mater, our overly energetic dog, provides a good greeter, but honestly only adds to the chaos.

Butlers are both out-of-date and out of our financial league, but a girl can dream.

As much as my house could use my butler, my disordered and dissheveled soul needs one more. As entropy is to the playroom, so is sin to my soul, fighting up against the order established and reestablished by the Lord and His truth.

Each Sabbath time, the Lord picks up the heap that is my soul and gently places it back upon the solid resting place of His Word, the hook that is Himself. Carried by His grace, He places me back where I belong, in His presence, under His authority, ordered by His truths.

I am so very thankful for the Gentle Butler of my soul, the one who orders my thoughts and desires and life in a way that most honors Him and most satisfies me. Without His moment by moment intervention, my soul would be in greater disarray than our playroom after the tribe has played dodgeball.

The Gentle Butler

They make it sound easy.
“Tell your soul where to go.”
But everything within me
Resists that upward flow.

It cannot climb, as hikers do,
With grit and maps and such,
A soul is more a fallen cloak
Unmoving though enticed much.

Pulled daily down to self,
Souls are subject to gravity.
Neither moralism nor ought
can overcome such depravity.

Souls belong on God’s hook;
There anchored they can stretch.
They can’t get there on their own,
So someone must go fetch.

Come again, O Gentle Butler,
Pick up this soul strewn about.
Misshapen, in an unruly heap,
Wrinkled with sin and doubt.

Pick me up again, Kind Sir,
Set me back where I belong.
You set all to order again,
You set right all set wrong.