It’s January, the month of new beginnings. It’s a good time to sort out our treasures and trash. We do it at Christmas, when we carefully pick through the discarded wrapping paper to make sure no treasure is thrown away with the trash. We do it again as we put away our Christmas decorations. Some of the old decorations have become too soiled, some ornaments got broken, and some of the strings of lights became strings of darks. We throw out the trash, but we carefully store the treasures.
It is also a good time to look at our lives. What are the treasures from this last year? Often, they are the moments and experiences made valuable by the grace of God at work in our lives and others. And the trash? That’s those moments, words, or thoughts we recall with embarrassment, disappointment, and sometimes guilt.
It can be hard to tell the difference between trash and treasure. Our minds can play tricks on us. My husband keeps a kind of mental tally of meetings he has conducted: good ones in the plus column, and those he perceived as failures in the minus column. But occasionally someone talks to him, years after a meeting, telling him how much it helped. What he thought was trash, was really treasure.
Even so, most of the time we have a pretty good idea about what to keep and what to toss. So, let’s think about that in a few different parts of life.
Our actions
Many people make resolutions about what they will do, or not do in the coming year. We prayerfully considered the changes we wanted to see in 2017. And we started well. But life got crazy, the urgent clamored for our attention, and we started slipping back into the old patterns.
Take, for example, social media. We determined to silence our phones- to stop being victims of the buzz, the ring, the chirp.
Generally, we know when messages need immediate attention. The trick is being able to curb the impulse to interrupt everything, even very important conversations, to answer the ones that should wait.
Let’s renew our commitment to free our lives of digital bondage and garbage. Let’s create media free times of the day. Let’s not get caught in Facebook when there are real faces that need our attention. At first it may cause some anxiety. “Maybe I’ll miss something!” “She doesn’t like to be kept waiting.” If necessary, inform those around you that you won’t answer your messages right away, but you promise to write back later. Attentiveness is a treasure. Obsession is trash. [Read more…]
Last month, while we were on a home visit to the USA, my Dad passed away. Dad was 94 years old and had been failing for some. Last year he told me there were three things that made him sad. One, he was almost deaf. Two, he couldn’t remember what he did hear. And three, he could no longer sign his name.
Do you ever feel like a dinosaur? People who buy the lies of the current moral confusion, with all its relativism, call themselves Progressives. That makes people like us- people who hold onto proven, established principles of truth- dinosaurs. Our day is over. Now it’s their day. Or, so they say.
Sally and Jim decide that God is calling them Africa. They are both excited, but a little afraid, too. (I am sure you remember that combination of conflicting emotions.) Before leaving for Africa, Jim and Sally have to visit churches and raise support. That means meeting a lot of people, and staying in many homes. Now, Jim is an outgoing guy who has never met a stranger. He talks easily in any situation. Sally is a private person- a nice gal with a warm heart, but she doesn’t meet strangers easily. That is a recipe for tension. How will Sally and Jim manage the expectations they will encounter from churches, combined with Sally’s reticence about new people and places?