It's funny how life throws the unexpected at you. It often comes as you would expect...when you're not ready, hence it's meaning-
unexpected. The unexpected is when things get real, and makes you think deeper, otherwise, you just keep doing the day to day routine...or at least that's how it is for me.
Often times, I feel like I don't do all of what I should or want to do. Mainly, because it would
cramp my style. Or I've thought that if I,
would have just waited, or
done it a long time ago, then it would be better and the timing would be or would've been,
just right. And let's face it...Life is tough, why open the door for things that could make it harder???
Sounds even worse as I type it then when I thought it.
The words Legacy and Heritage have been used around me more often in the last month then probably my lifetime. Or maybe the older I get, I just pay a little more attention to those things. The more I think about those words and the value they carry, the more I realize that I've gotten it all wrong.
We've been "cleaning out"...If you follow me on Facebook, then you've probably seen that we've had two yard sales in the past week. And you might have even attended them and wondered, what in the world is up?? Why are you selling all of this stuff??
Here it is in a nutshell....
Stuff.
Lots of stuff.
Lots of stuff is keeping me from God.
Trust me when I say, I am a lover of all fine things. I think nothing wrong with having beautiful things. Our Creator makes beautiful things and I believe delights in the creation of His hands...likewise, being created in His image, I believe we do as well;and I do believe we can bring Him glory through our things.
But our family has too much stuff. I'm so ready to simplify the things in my life that hinders me from digging deeper in the eternal things.
As I was cleaning out, I came across my grandmother's china. And before most of you gasp in horror, calm down, I didn't sell it in the yard sale. I didn't even think of doing such a thing, until my mother found out that we were having a yard sale and said "please, don't sell my china..."...
China.
That is when it hit me harder and my feelings of what a legacy is and what kind of heritage I pass down just grabbed my heart; and questions like, "unless I'm feeding the poor with this China, what use is it to my children's children?"
I started thinking, as hard as it would be....I want to be Paul.
I want God to take me out of my comfort zone in the stuff, and bring me into the complete comfort of His provisions for my life. I want to be ready for the unexpected without the clutter of things hindering me from going deeper then the surface. I want to teach my children that dirty floors are worth the feet that brought them. That "precious and valuable" items are not to be stuck behind glass doors because we are afraid of them being broken. Because, that message is not true. Beautiful things should be used, and should be broken from their use; because that is the picture of a beautifully used life.
I want to be broken. I want to be used and broken time and time again from my ways, because that is what draws me from myself and closer to our Creator and His ways. I've gotten it all wrong, time and time again, and I know I will continue too. But there is the beauty in Grace. Thank God, for His grace!
I don't want to stay behind glass doors, where I am seen but rarely used. That is what I want my children's children to see.
That is what I want my legacy to be.
It's not about the china. If that is all I pass down.... if that is the most valuable thing in my possession to give, then I have not lived at all.
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