Mid-week 1-2-13

Dear Family of faith, Happy New Year! I pray that this new chance at life in 2013 brings you good health and much joy. Jill and I had a great week away in the south of Florida (where the weather was a few degrees warmer and sunnier). It was a much needed vacation and, to be truthful, we weren’t in much of a hurry to come back! Of course, we would miss all of you even more if we stayed away too long, though. While we were in Naples, we visited Jill’s aunt and uncle, who live on a lake on the road to Marco Island. As I sat on the couch in their modular home, I noticed a cabinet on the wall opposite me, stuffed with Precious Moments figurines. I thought to myself, “Those must be really valuable to Aunt Ginny since she has taken up so much space with them in their small home.” The couple had downsized considerably when moving from the north. You can imagine how surprised I was a few minutes later when Aunt Ginny asked Jill, “Would you like my Precious Moments collection? None of my children want them.” Jill had no interest in them, either; but I got to thinking about the irony of the situation. This woman had avidly amassed a fortune in figurines during her lifetime, and now they were worthless—not just to her offspring, but even to herself. It had all been a waste of money. I have collected things in my own life that later turned out to be of little interest to me. I’m not sure what it is about us human beings, that we find a strange delight in amassing things that have no practical value. I only wish that I could recapture the cost of the things I collected and later disposed of and given it to those who really needed help. I’m much more careful now not to spend money on whims or things that have no intrinsic value. Especially as we begin a new year, it might be worth our while to ask the question before we buy, “Who would want this when we’re gone?” If the answer is “No one,” it’s probably not worth buying. On Christmas Eve morning as I was taking my shower, I took down my washcloth and discovered, to my great surprise, a big black blob underneath it. I couldn’t quite tell what it was, so I called Jill in to check it out. From the other side of the glass, she could discern the makings of a frog. What to do? I could just see myself running around the house naked, chasing after the hopping amphibian! Jill came up with a better solution. She used a pastry scraper and a jar to capture the creature. Then the question was “What should we do with it?” Since we didn’t have frog legs on our Christmas Eve menu, we opted for letting the frog go in the yard. I got to thinking about that whole experience: There are a lot of things in our lives that we make into problems that really aren’t problems at all. Instead of stewing about them, we ought simply to take hold of them and let them go. Why should we keep anything in our lives that gives us headaches? Don’t stress about anything you don’t need to get stressed over. Just let it go! Looking forward to seeing you all on Sunday. And happy dieting and exercising! With affection, Pastor Carlan