Sharing the electric blanket of life

By DR. MARK ROSS/Columnist

For a couple of days, it has been cold. How cold has it been? As a friend told me, it was so cold he saw a couple of beagle hounds trying to jumpstart a rabbit.
I remember years ago hearing a man describe the first time he slept under an electric blanket. He and his wife were visiting friends in the north who graciously gave up their own bed for their guests. The bed had one of the newest gadgets, an electric blanket. When the guests went to bed, they immediately turned the dial up on the blanket. After a few minutes, the man became warm and turned it down. Conversely, the woman became cold and turned the blanket up. That is how the entire night went. Convinced he was burning up, the man adjusted the dial down. The woman would wake up freezing and adjusted the dial up. It was a miserable night filled with bickering and complaining. Neither slept at all.
The next morning the pair was hardly speaking as they made the bed and gathered their things. Reaching under the bed to retrieve a shoe, the man made an embarrassing discovery. The electric blanket that the couple could not seem to adjust properly was not even plugged into the wall socket. The pair had fought all night over an inoperative dial.
The apostle Paul never slept under an electric blanket. For most of you, that comes as no surprise. Given what we know, Paul spent most of his nights in a cold jail cell. Therefore, it may sound strange to say that Paul knew very well how to operate properly an electric blanket. He even went so far to print the instructions for us in Philippians 2:4.
Only one verse, but it explains very clearly how to share the controls of an electric blanket.
Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.
As the expression goes, “That is easier said than done.”
The risk is that, if I am ignoring my own interests for the sake of someone else’s, who is looking after mine? Potentially, the other person is. However, do not make the mistake of thinking that this selfless ethic is simply another way of getting what you want. That kind of logic would go like this, “I will look after your interests if you will look after mine. However, if you begin to ignore my interests, I will certainly ignore yours.” Paul never intended to leave room for that kind of bargaining. If we look to the interests of others, there is a good chance no one will look to ours. Paul simply intended selfless sacrifice, the ultimate fate of anyone who follows the strange carpenter from Nazareth who stumbles under a crushing cross.
Yet, that is a lot of trouble for people who simply fight over the controls of an electric blanket. The problem for most of us is not the blanket but who lies under the blanket, us. Would it not be a lot simpler to buy dual controls? Yes, of course it would. Yet, that still leaves us with the same problem, two selfish people in the same bed. Pretty cold, isn’t it?

Dr. Mark Ross is pastor of Marion Baptist Church.