Devotion for June 15, 2016
15/06/16 11:04
Greetings!!
Yard sale time! You all know about yard sales. Yard sales are those activities where you take everything you don’t want anymore and you put it out in your yard in hopes that someone else might want it. After all you know the saying, “One’s man’s junk is another man’s treasure…” Or at least you hope it will be another person’s treasure - because it if is then you are rid of it, and perhaps you have made a little money as well!
So it is yard sale time! It was yard sale time for the church. That means that not only are your no longer beloved items going to be sold, but a whole congregation of no longer beloved items are going to be accumulated together for a giant yard sale!!
So everyone scours their homes and gathers up those long neglected or non used items and carries them to the church fellowship building where they are sorted and priced and placed on tables and arranged and picked through (cause before you even put the things out you may find the perfect treasure for yourself!) The amount of donations were so great that the fellowship hall was filled to overflowing!!
The day of the yard sale comes and you carry all the tables of goodies out to the parking lot where you anticipate crowds of people showing up just waiting to take home all the wonderfully unique and important objects donated for this important event.
You spend the day then watching as people stop by and peruse the stacks of clothing, and nic-nacs and kitchen items and toys and crafty articles. You watch with baited breath hoping that the shopper will fill their bags with as much as they can - not only will you then make money but that there will be one more component of the yard sale gone!
The day then ends and even though you know you have sold tons of stuff, there seems to be just as much or even more than you began. There is a sneaky suspicion that someone has been secretly bringing more stuff and adding it to your already overly crowded tables of no longer cherished items……
So back the tables go into the fellowship hall, still covered in yard sale bargains; back into the church go the stand alone pieces of furniture; back into the building go the boxes and boxes of shoes and bags of clothes and hangers of clothes and whatever else may have been left behind by the maybe not so eager shoppers…..
And now you must decide the destination of all the left overs…. What is going to happen to the mounds of clothing and shoes and nic-nacs and other pieces of this enormous yard sale?
People come in and bag up and box up and maybe do a little more sorting through. Social service agencies are called - some of them more willing than others to help with your problem of what to do with all this left over yard sale stuff. Times are arranged, people come and get portions of the goods and even with all that there is still several piles of odds and ends that are still residents of the tables in the fellowship building.
Some of the yard sale remains will then end up in the dumpster; some will be shoved into a corner where it will stay until someone wonders why this is here and dispose of it one way or another….. and once again the yard sale is over…….
We occasionally need to have a personal spiritual inventory yard sale. We occasionally need to search through the corners of our minds and our hearts and see what left overs of our lives linger in us - because we all have residual spiritual baggage that weighs us down like stuffed full closets in our houses. There comes a time when we need to carry out all the clutter that holds us back from a true relationship with God and with one another.
But cleaning out ourselves, our hearts and minds, can be just as much work as putting together a yard sale; and is always just as much work as trying to figure out what to do with the left overs from the yard sale.
What do you do with all those experiences from your past that clog you up and create barriers for you to be able to trust and obey a loving God? How do we have a personal yard sale to get rid of all that past 'stuff' that weighs us down and clogs us up? So here perhaps it is a little easier than distributing yard sale remains - because all we have to do is ask God to take it away - give it to him and he will take it. Gone.
Amen
Yard sale time! You all know about yard sales. Yard sales are those activities where you take everything you don’t want anymore and you put it out in your yard in hopes that someone else might want it. After all you know the saying, “One’s man’s junk is another man’s treasure…” Or at least you hope it will be another person’s treasure - because it if is then you are rid of it, and perhaps you have made a little money as well!
So it is yard sale time! It was yard sale time for the church. That means that not only are your no longer beloved items going to be sold, but a whole congregation of no longer beloved items are going to be accumulated together for a giant yard sale!!
So everyone scours their homes and gathers up those long neglected or non used items and carries them to the church fellowship building where they are sorted and priced and placed on tables and arranged and picked through (cause before you even put the things out you may find the perfect treasure for yourself!) The amount of donations were so great that the fellowship hall was filled to overflowing!!
The day of the yard sale comes and you carry all the tables of goodies out to the parking lot where you anticipate crowds of people showing up just waiting to take home all the wonderfully unique and important objects donated for this important event.
You spend the day then watching as people stop by and peruse the stacks of clothing, and nic-nacs and kitchen items and toys and crafty articles. You watch with baited breath hoping that the shopper will fill their bags with as much as they can - not only will you then make money but that there will be one more component of the yard sale gone!
The day then ends and even though you know you have sold tons of stuff, there seems to be just as much or even more than you began. There is a sneaky suspicion that someone has been secretly bringing more stuff and adding it to your already overly crowded tables of no longer cherished items……
So back the tables go into the fellowship hall, still covered in yard sale bargains; back into the church go the stand alone pieces of furniture; back into the building go the boxes and boxes of shoes and bags of clothes and hangers of clothes and whatever else may have been left behind by the maybe not so eager shoppers…..
And now you must decide the destination of all the left overs…. What is going to happen to the mounds of clothing and shoes and nic-nacs and other pieces of this enormous yard sale?
People come in and bag up and box up and maybe do a little more sorting through. Social service agencies are called - some of them more willing than others to help with your problem of what to do with all this left over yard sale stuff. Times are arranged, people come and get portions of the goods and even with all that there is still several piles of odds and ends that are still residents of the tables in the fellowship building.
Some of the yard sale remains will then end up in the dumpster; some will be shoved into a corner where it will stay until someone wonders why this is here and dispose of it one way or another….. and once again the yard sale is over…….
We occasionally need to have a personal spiritual inventory yard sale. We occasionally need to search through the corners of our minds and our hearts and see what left overs of our lives linger in us - because we all have residual spiritual baggage that weighs us down like stuffed full closets in our houses. There comes a time when we need to carry out all the clutter that holds us back from a true relationship with God and with one another.
But cleaning out ourselves, our hearts and minds, can be just as much work as putting together a yard sale; and is always just as much work as trying to figure out what to do with the left overs from the yard sale.
What do you do with all those experiences from your past that clog you up and create barriers for you to be able to trust and obey a loving God? How do we have a personal yard sale to get rid of all that past 'stuff' that weighs us down and clogs us up? So here perhaps it is a little easier than distributing yard sale remains - because all we have to do is ask God to take it away - give it to him and he will take it. Gone.
Amen