Consider Cleaning The Plate

We made it to August, and I am really excited to share this idea for this solo episode. The analogy "clean the plate" comes from an umpire who is supposed to dust the dirt off of home plate. Cleaning the plate is all about focusing on the small things that can make a big difference. In this episode we will examine Ecclesiastes 9:9-11 and look for ways that we can clean the plate in our workplaces, our homes, and within the church. 

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Consider one another as a podcast focused on each other. Thank you for tuning in to this podcast that is all about stirring up love and good works in one another. We made it to August in the first solo episode of season three. It is the first Friday of August that you are hearing this, or at least when it airs. It is the last Friday in July as I am recording this. What a great season it has been already, and a lot more good episodes already recorded. So many exciting stories, testimonies of faith have been shared with all of us, and I'm excited to keep it going. With the Dodgers just finishing up their series win against the Mariners, it seemed like a good time to talk about cleaning the plate. I will tell you what I mean in just a moment. But first, we're gonna look at scripture, and first, before that, first, I'm gonna thank you all for your support in this effort. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being willing to let me interview you and share your story. Thank you all for your encouragement. I'm just so grateful to be considered by you and to get to consider all of you. And although the focus of the Consider One Another podcast is just that, by interviewing members of the Bremerton Church of Christ, I love getting these opportunities once a month. I like to do it on the first Friday of the month, gives me a couple per season, just to share a devotional thought or an analogy with all of you. For this one, there were a lot of scripture options to go with, but what I settled on was Ecclesiastes nine. Really quick, let me read it for you. It's Ecclesiastes nine, verses nine through eleven. Live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life which he has given you under the sun, all your days of vanity, for that is your portion in life, and in the labor which you perform under the sun. Verse ten. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going. I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor favor to men of skill. But time and chance happen to them all. The author of Ecclesiastes, likely Solomon, continues talking about time and chance things that happen, like a fish caught in a cruel net, or birds that get caught in a snare. But what I am focusing in on is verse ten. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might. There's labor under the sun which we perform here on earth, but he says where we are going in the grave, there's no work, there's nothing to put your hand to in the grave. He speaks very harshly here and reminds us that time and chance happen to all of us and death will happen to all of us. However, what I am keying in on is verse ten. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might. Today is all about how small things can make a big difference. In our homes, our workplaces, and in our church, if we care about laying seemingly insignificant groundwork, it will end up making a difference in the now as well as later on. Whatever you do, do with all your might. Time and chance is coming for all of us, but what we can control is to work hard. And today I'm talking about working hard in the little things. So it's an analogy, so let me tell a couple stories about from when I was in Florida. Something I loved doing and actually really needed to do to make extra money was umpire baseball and softball. You know I love baseball, and one of the ways that I applied that love for baseball was by umpiring a lot of games. Again, it I needed money, uh, I needed this extra income, and it paid well because it's a very undesirable job, especially as you labor underneath the hot sun in Florida, listening to the yelling at parents. The games paid well, and I got to be on a baseball field, so I umpired a lot of baseball and softball games uh the years that I lived in Florida. Some were more fun than others, but as I cared about making money to support my preaching, and I cared about providing a fair experience for the kids, and one where I hopefully wouldn't get yelled at by parents and coaches, I wanted to hone my craft of umpiring and do the very best job that I could. I believe, like as far as precise judgment calls go, being a home played umpire is the hardest officiating job in all of sports. At youth games where kids are very different sizes, the ball doesn't always fly straight, and the field is not always kept well, and there are parents behind you that are not objective observers of the game, but rather they're kids' advocates. I wanted to make sure their kid does not get struck out ever. Their parents are there to defend their kids' honor no matter what. And then the coaches are still mad at the last umpire from the last game who was lazy and did not care very much, and so all this falls on the current umpire, me, and my shoulders. It is a really hard job. One that I enjoy, but one that is objectively hard. What I found was the best thing I could do as an umpire who cares about doing a good job is clean the plate. In fact, it became such a big deal to me that the first thing I would do whenever I arrived at any field or to any game that I was going to umpire was clean the plate. Here's why it was so important to me. We'll get into the analogy in just a second, but here's why it was so important to me as an umpire. At any level of baseball, home plate in some way is the standard for what is and what is not a strike. 17 inches wide, and my job was to see if the pitch actually flew over any part of the plate in the strike zone. Without the help of the new ABS automated ball strike uh presented by T-Mobile that the MOB has this year. We didn't get that at the Little League fields, obviously. It was just my job, my two eyes, to see if a strike or a ball uh was pitched by the pitcher based on the standard of the 17-inch wide home plate. The stereotype for umpires is typically someone with a power trip. Uh that's the stereotype, and I've worked with a lot of umpires. It's usually true. Because the amount of power that a baseball or softball umpire has on a field is unmatched in any other organized setting. Knowing that they have this power, the ability to call whatever they want to strike, whatever they want to call and out, and to throw anyone out of the baseball game, fans, coaches, spectators, that's all within their power and jurisdiction. So, with that power, knowing they have it, many umpires use this power to not have to hold themselves to any standard of accountability. In 2019, Major League Umpire Ron Culpa famously yelled at Astros manager AJ Hinch, quote, I can do whatever I want. And he was pretty much right at the time. Even at the highest level of baseball, this home plate umpire was able to yell at the opposition who was upset with him, I can do whatever I want. That's typically the stereotype for umpires. So as an umpire with a hard job, showing up to the field and cleaning the plate meant that I wanted to hold myself accountable to the objective standard as opposed to just wanting to do whatever I wanted because I could get away with it. Further, it showed I was willing to work hard. Another stereotype of umpires is that they are lazy. Cleaning the plate properly, if you've ever seen an umpire do it, means getting your brush out, which includes actually having the brush tool to be able to do this, bending over and brushing the dirt off of all the corners of the plate. It might sound like a small deal, but after umpiring game after game in the hot Florida sun, the plates continually getting covered in dirt from slides and digging in the dirt and wind or whatever else, the plate gets dirty a lot. When you're taught when you're hot and tired, it becomes a lot easier to just let the plate be dirty. I was just texting my wife letting her know I was about to record this episode, and I saw her text just roll in on my computer screen, and she said, Oh, is that on your mind because of the slow pitch softball? Uh we were just on a walk the other night. We went down to Pendergast Park, that's right by our house, we went on a walk, and then at the fields there was slow pitch softball. In slow pitch softball, a standard for a strike is if the ball lands on home plate. That's a strike in slow pitch softball, contrary to regular baseball or fast pitch softball. And as we got to the field, I was excited to watch this, and we pull up, and there's an umpire behind the plate that we could barely even see. We could see the umpire, we could barely see the plate. It was completely covered in dirt. It was not able to be seen, so the objective strike zone of what made a strike and what made a ball was completely covered, and apparently the person umpiring, calling balls and strikes, had no intention of clearing up the standard so he could see it. So, darling, no, that is not why this was on my mind. It was on my mind because the Dodgers just beat the Mariners. But that is a good point as well. At slow pitched softball on a Tuesday night at Pendergast Park, or the MOB with Ron Culpa yelling at a manager, umpires need to be held to a standard. And a lot of times they don't want to be. But by cleaning the plate, it uncovers the standard and shows I'm willing to work hard, getting my brush out, bending over every time that it gets dirty, holding myself to a standard, and finally cleaning the plate made it easier for me to admit when I was wrong. Besides it seeming like the likely thing for a hard and accountable worker to do, if the home plate umpire calls a strike and that plate is completely covered in dirt, like we saw at that slow pitched softball game, and you argue that call with him, it would be easy for him to say he was right without any evidence the other way because the plate was completely dirty. Cleaning the plate shows a willingness to be wrong and admit when a mistake is made. I could keep talking about baseball and softball and the art of umpiring, and I certainly will. But let's jump to what this looks like in our lives today. Specifically, I'm looking at three places in our jobs, in our homes, and in our church. As I've been hinting at, point number one is cleaning the plate, hold yourself accountable to a standard. Cleaning the plate, whatever that may be for you. Okay, that's the analogy in umpiring. What that looks like for you in your job, in your home, in our church, uh whatever that may be for you, is almost never a huge deal. Actually, it's purposefully a small thing. As important as cleaning the plate was for me, it really was small most of the time. Important with long lasting implications, but the action itself was small. I did not show up to the fields and get everyone's attention and make a really big speech about how good of a person, how honest of an umpire, and how hard working I would be. Instead, it was a small, simple action, show up, find the standard, dust it off. Cleaning the plate is about being wise small, if I can steal from D. Bowman's famous book. His phrase, the title of it being Be Wise Small. A lot of times we want to be wise in the biggest moments, which is important, but what about being wise in the small moments? Don't neglect those small moments. Be wise small and pick up trash when you see it. Be wise small and clean the plate. Ask yourself in my job, in my home, at our church, what are some things I can do to show I am taking accountability? When we're trying to identify ways that we can clean the plate in these three areas of our life. We're not talking about things that are inherently hard or inherently complicated, but we're talking about things that we can just do because we care. Small things that show care and accountability. Here's what it might look like at church. If I can challenge you, consider your mindset when you walk into the church building. What's the first thing on your mind when you walk into church services? My challenge to you is to talk with the very first person you see when you walk in. Whoever it is. A lot of times we can have someone in mind that we really want to talk to and encourage, and that's good. But instead of walking in and going straight to your usual spots, be willing to talk to the very first person you see. Or perhaps during the break, the consider one another break. Instead of getting up and running over to a specific person that you usually check in with, just turn around, see who's behind you, and check in with them. Use the opportunities to do the small things that are right in front of you that will have long-lasting impacts. We'll talk more about the impact later. But think about this at home as well. We want to hold ourselves to a standard. In Florida before we moved out here, we had our vows, my wife and I had our vows printed out and hung up on our dining room wall. Uh though more symbolic than an actual for reference, it kept us accountable because we could see them right there on the wall. What that might look like for you holding yourself accountable in the home, I'm not sure. Hopefully there's something that's coming to mind for you. But the encouragement is to take accountability and personal responsibility. When you say something, mean it. Whether that is something as simple as following through on having a conversation that you said you would have. Or you are talking about your wedding vows, wherever it is on that range, keep yourself accountable to your words in the home, in the church, and in your workplace. When it comes to your job, ask yourself, am I the type of person that is willing to do the small things to hold myself accountable? In my job as an umpire, that looked like cleaning the plate, just dusting it off and holding myself to a standard, showing I'm not here for myself, I'm here to call a fair game according to the clean plates. In my job as a preacher, a similar principle I hold myself to is I like to start any sermon or talk with scripture. The Bible is the standard, and you are not coming to church to hear me tell jokes or give you my opinions on a bunch of things vaguely related to the Bible, but by starting with reading our home text, or like Dan telling you where you should be opening up your New Testaments, shows that we have a standard that we want to hold ourselves to. You probably know what that looks like better than I do at your job. This starts to overlap with our next point, but part of taking personal responsibility and holding yourself accountable is working hard at things that may seem below you or are someone else's job. Do a job that is below you in your work. One time I was at an amusement park and I saw someone uh wearing the cast member, okay, it was Disneyland, I saw them wearing the cast member badge, but they were also wearing a suit, and this cast member seemed like they were on their way to somewhere important. Uh didn't seem like their usual job was picking up trash. Nonetheless, I saw them on their way wearing their suits, going throughout the park, seeing a piece of trash, picking it up, and throwing it away while on their way to their probably important business. Whatever your job is, if there's something that seems like is below you, hold yourself accountable. Take pride in what you do, find a way to do small things that show you care about what you do, hold yourself accountable, and point number two, work hard. Specifically, work hard at what you can control. As I said before, there's a lot out of my control as an umpire. As the author of Ecclesiastes writes in our text, chapter 9, verse 11, there is time and chance that happens to all of us. It is not about being the strongest or the fastest. Time and chance happen to everyone. If your plan for avoiding problems in your home, your job, or your church is to just do everything perfectly, that is not going to work. Because not only will you be so far from perfect, there is still time and chance that can happen to you, like a fish caught in the net in verse twelve. There are things outside of our control. Cleaning the plate is not going to make all of your problems go away, but it will help you with the things that are outside of your control. Like our key verse says, Ecclesiastes 9, verse 10, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might. Here's how it looked for me as an umpire. It meant bringing the proper tools to be able to clean the plate. Just having a brush to clean off dry dirt was a noticeable improvement compared to most umpires. But umpiring in Florida meant that I would often be dealing with mud getting on the plate, which is much harder to clean. On a particularly rainy day, I came prepared and brought an old rag in case I needed to literally scrub the plates down. When I got to the rainy and mucky field, I could not even see home plates. It was that covered in mud. So while the kids were warming up, I took it upon myself to scrub the mud off the plates with the rag that I brought. To be clear, this was not my job. Dusting the plate off when someone slides into home, that is the umpire's job. But uncovering the mud from home plate before the game even starts really should be the groundkeeper's job. That game would end up going as many other games went, with lots of things happening outside of my control. And perhaps some calls that should have gone the other way than how I called it. But that game I did not hear a single complaint from the stands or from a coach. Everyone's first impression of me at the field was someone who wanted to work hard and provide a fair game. It would have been easy for me to show up to the game and say, that's not my job, someone else should have attended to that. Play ball and avoided the hard work that would have held me accountable. But instead, I did what I could. I worked hard at what was within my control, though someone else's job probably. I scrubbed it off continually throughout that game, whenever more mud or more rain got on the plate, took my rag out and took care of business. Throughout the game, when there was a questionable call, it made it much, much harder for these parents and coaches to complain. Let me say this clearly: working hard at what you can control is a lot easier in umpiring than it is in almost any other type of job, in our roles as husbands and fathers in the home or as church members. I'm not trying to lower that, but it is an analogy that I think paints a good picture. The point of the umpire story is analogous and showing a small glimpse of how this can look in real life. So within the home, challenge yourself. What is the first thing that I do when I walk into my home? For me, oftentimes it's to pick up my switch controller or to turn on the game or to just sit on the couch for a second. But what if you challenge yourself to make the first thing you did when you walk into your home cleaning the plate? This time I am talking literally. Consider cleaning the plate literally. If you see a dish or a couple of dishes in the sink, uh clean those plates. Someone else may get to it eventually, or maybe technically it's someone else's turn. But take accountability and work hard at what is within your control and clean it yourself. When the workday ends and you find yourself back at home, whether you have kids or a spouse or you live by yourself, there are a lot of things that can go wrong after a workday. And that can be stressful and upsetting. But there's also a lot that you can control. Small, simple things like washing the dishes that are in the sink, taking care of a roommate's responsibility, or perhaps your spouse's job of washing the dishes can change the rest of the night by just focusing on and working hard at what you can control. Ask yourself, what's the first thing I'm gonna do when I get home today? In the church, like was mentioned a week or so ago, show up to church services when you can. There is a lot out of our control. Finances, childcare, family conflicts, stress at work, fill in the blank for something happening in your life right now. But you can control showing up. If I can shout out Liz and Luca, they show up every Wednesday, and I know Luca hates that I am going to say this, but they oftentimes show up late. He hates it, but I love it when I see them show up late. Whenever I see anyone show up late, it means that you had a valid excuse to not show up at all. Liz and Luca cannot completely control her work schedule to make life as perfectly convenient as possible on Wednesdays, but they can control if they are willing to put in the Extra work and show up. Whether that is having dinner outside of their car before class, like they have done, or showing up whenever they are able to, my encouragement to you is to control what you can control. Show up to church whenever you can. That's one Wednesday a month, two Wednesdays a month, the ladies' night, show up to whatever is within your control. Work hard at the small things, it'll make a difference in the big things. I already preached on this a week ago, so I won't harp on it. But if you show up when you can, it'll have long-lasting impacts on the way that we are able to bear one another's burdens because of the relationships we have in Christ. If you were in our Christian communication class, we talked a lot about input versus output goals. Whatever your job is, preacher, umpire, sailor, or elder, there is a lot that is out of your control that can serve as easy excuses when things don't go right. When things go wrong, when outputs are not met, you can say, Well, you know, it was raining, that's out of my control. Or that person didn't do the dishes, that's outside of my control. At your job, there's so much outside of your control. But when we focus on input goals, when we're focusing on working hard at what we can control, my encouragement to you and your job, don't focus on what you can't control. Your boss, your peers, or anything else, but something you can control is working hard to have a Christ-like attitude. Not only will this shine a bright light for Christ to all of your co-workers, but it will also make your day better. Focus on what you can control, even if that's just focusing on your attitude. Focus on working hard at that thing. It'll make a difference in the now and in the long run. Don't look at the outputs, look at the inputs, focus on what you can control. Find what that is in your workplace. Clean the plates, work hard at what you can control. Finally, cleaning the plate means being willing to admit when you are wrong. At home, at work, and in the church, oftentimes we do not want to admit when we are wrong. We can find an excuse, we can find a way to blame someone else, or we can blame things outside of our control. But what cleaning the plate encourages us to do is admit when we are wrong. I'll give you an umpiring example of this. As was my custom, I get to the field, I clean the plate, I work hard, I hold myself accountable, I do what I can to provide the best experience possible at this softball game. Fun fact, I really enjoy umpiring fast pitch softball much more than baseball because the ball in softball is yellow, and it's much easier to see, even with a clean plate. That brown baseball over brown dirt can get hard to see. So I'm umpiring this softball game, and one team is just destroying the other. The team that is losing eventually gets a scoring opportunity, and this girl is running home, slides in, and I really think I got the call wrong. I got a little bit too close to the play. It was hard to back up and get the right vantage point. I see the girls slide in, and even though they were losing by a bunch, it didn't matter. Uh the team was really upset because I called her out. They just really wanted to get a run on the board, and I called her out, and they thought she was safe. Looking back, I think she was safe. I think I got it wrong. And so this team down a million runs just starts taking all their frustration out on me because I missed one call. Uh this hurt my feelings because I felt like I'd had a really good game up until that point. But then the one mistake turned them all against me. Again, at any job, whether it's at home, at work, on a baseball field, we don't want to look at ourselves. We want to look at everything else. And it would have been easy for me to say, this team is really bad at softball, they probably don't even know the rules, the parents are just mad at me, I probably didn't get it wrong. But there comes a point where we need to stop looking at everyone else and everything else and look at ourselves and admit when we are wrong. We just typically don't want to admit when we are wrong. From something as serious as sin to something as trivial as a safe outcall at home. We don't want to be wrong, so we certainly don't want to admit it. So we find ways to bend the truth or convince ourselves that it wasn't our fault. But we all sin, we all mess up. Admitting you are wrong is part of the forgiveness process, as we've learned recently in first John one verses eight through ten. Let's not pretend we are perfect, let's admit our faults and our need for help and our need for a savior. Not only that, but you will find that admitting wrongs is contagious. As an umpire, specifically at this game, it was terrifying to even think about giving a crowd of angry people even a little bit of legitimacy to what they were saying. They were being so mean, and if I told them they were right potentially, they could have gotten even meaner. But that night I didn't want to be like the umpires that I was used to working with or used to seeing when I was a kid playing baseball who were unwilling to recognize when they were wrong, because I didn't have to. If an umpire calls it a strike, it just simply is a strike. If the umpire says you're out, you are out. There's seemingly no benefit to admitting when you were wrong. In fact, when I was trained to be an umpire, uh I was trained very well to be an umpire. However, one of the things in their training they encouraged us to do was lie. They said when someone tells you that you missed something, the example was if someone comes up to you and they say that a runner missed second base as they were rounding it, and you objectively did not see it, what I was trained to do was to lie and name a specific part of the foot and say, Nope, they got it with their heel. I saw it myself. And then the coach would be uh turned away because you were digging in further, pretending that you saw what you did not see. This is what I was trained to do. Of course, as a Christian and as a honest umpire, I was unwilling to do this. And this night, with that safe outcall at home, after the game, I realized I looked back in my own mind's replay, and I knew that I got it wrong. So to this angry set of fans, I just go over to them, put my hand on my chest, and say, Hey guys, I I know I missed that one at home plate. That's my bad. Uh I'm really sorry. No response from the crowd, and I just walk away trying to get out of there before who knows what comes next. What comes next was not someone running at me angry, but someone running up to me with a smile on their face. A smile with a little bit of guilt. They say, Hey blue, uh that was me who was giving you the hardest time back there. Uh I'm sorry about that. We've had a really hard season, and that was my daughter sliding home. We just we got upset when you missed that one, and I don't know why I did that. Uh I'm really sorry. Is what he said to me. In all my years of umpiring, I've never had a fan apologize to me. But when I apologize to them for my mistake, it was contagious. I admit my wrongs, and that makes someone else have a lot easier time admitting when they are wrong. What I'm trying to say, admitting wrongs, cleaning the plate is contagious. Holding yourself to a standard, working hard at what you can control, and admitting when you are wrong will be contagious to those around you. As youth umpires show up to a field, knowing how low the bar is set for them by other umpires before them, they cannot even be bothered to clean the plate because nobody else does. But if we find what that is in our lives, if we clean the plate, it will be contagious in others' lives as well as your own. Find something you can do this week, something that's really not complicated, not particularly hard, something small that you can do wherever you go. There is small groundwork that can be done that makes a big difference later in our homes, in our jobs, and in our church. Consider holding yourself accountable. Consider working hard at what you can control. Consider admitting when you are wrong. Consider cleaning the plate. The Bible tells us to consider one another in order to stir up love and good works in each other. So thank you for stirring up love and good works in me just by listening to this episode.