My wife and I have recently purchased a house and have been moving in. We moved to Virginia Beach two years ago but thought our house in the Nashville area would sell and we would soon buy one here. We left most of our things in boxes from that move and didn't even put one nail to hang pictures in the house we rented. Of course, that means we didn't even look at all the stuff we had for those two years.
The new house is about 500 sq. ft. smaller than the one we had in Nashville. It is an excellent time to downsize since we no longer have any children living with us. Each box we open is "like a box of chocolates." I only wonder how we could accumulate so much junk!
When I get frustrated going through the boxes I throw my hands in the air and exclaim, "We haven't need anything in this box for two years, how can we need it now? Let's just throw it all away!" Immediately I will find one of those treasures that I had forgotten and realize that I need to go through everything so that I don't throw out the treasures with the trash.
It is slow going. It is just like the rest of my life. You have to sort through a lot of things to find the treasures.
Not everything is great in church. Some people eliminate church from their lives because all of it isn't good. Churches will always be full of sinners and sinners do some bad things. They will treat you badly. They will hurt you behind your back and openly. It seems that life could be better without these things. But church also has some great things. It has the Word of God. It has a group of people called a Sunday School class that will be at your side whenever things go badly. It has eternity for its future. Throwing out church because it contains some bad things makes as much sense as throwing out your family because they sometimes disappoint you.
Still, going through everything to sort out the good can be slow going. I don't find a treasure in every box. You may not find a treasure at church every Sunday. But the ones you do find make the search worth it.
1 comment:
Point taken, Prentis. I stay home every Sunday using the excuse that if I go to church on Sunday, I'll really only get 1 day off a week because someone will probably ask me to do some sort of office work while I'm there to worship. What a cop out. I'm in the habit of having a slow, quiet Sunday morning. Instead of thinking how how I "deserve" that day away from church, I should remember the "treasures" I find each and every time I see those sweet faces that are genuinely happy to see me at church on a Sunday.
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