Garage Sale Fever...oh yeah, oh yeah!

When I traveled with a PR team in college we made up a song called Garage Sale Fever to pass the time in the van together when we were going to sing at a church that was pretty far from campus. We would list off some really random items that you might find at a garage sale when it was our turn to add something to the song....something macrame was usually included :)

I am pretty sure I have a distant memory involving this item :)

Anyway, when I was at my parent's house last week, we had the opportunity to go garage saling and thrifting ...I am adding this because it was such a coincidence and sometimes I think God puts two and two together for me.

I just saw this picture...

Isn't that TRUE!?  After a while a bunch of stuff builds up in our attitudes that we need to clear out and get rid of so we can GO ON loving people.  Grudges make us so critical, bitter, and unforgiving.

We cleared out closets today....it is a big job and nobody ever really looks forward to it....with 5 daughters it is one of the things I dread about "back to school" time...but, once it is over....we are ready for a new season and that feels good.  

This is one of the things God has been talking to me about for this sabbatical time....A NEW SEASON  Church stuff can be wonderful, beautiful, inspiring, encouraging....but, there's also a bunch of negative things that come up.  Brad doesn't tell me everything he has to deal with in the life of the church....obviously, there are things that come to his attention that need to remain confidential, but, even without knowing those things, there are still a lot of things that come up in the life of a church that do not make me happy or that flat out make me stinking mad because in my mind it has nothing to do with someone's name being written in the Book of Life.  I say that because of a verse in Philippians where Paul is urging some believers to help two women resolve an issue and he makes a comment that the people's names he is mentioning are written in the Book of Life.  I think he really wants everyone involved to remember that...that is what it is all about...what affects eternity.  Some issues are temporal and we really shouldn't get all upset about those things....that is one lesson.  Another one is that the names of the women who were totally frustrating the believer in the situation Paul is addressing were written in the Book of Life and, it seems to me, Paul wanted to remind them of that as they dealt with the issue because that part of the issue was eternal.  We are all in this together :)

That's why sometimes we need to do the necessary work to have a grudge sale.....we need to let go of the temporal things that are frustrating us and remember to focus on the eternal parts of life.