Wednesday, May 21, 2025

“Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith.” (Philippians 3: 8 - 9)

                I’d like to think of ourselves as savers, not hoarders. Our adult children may be  thinking otherwise.

                They have stepped up and, on their weekends, our kids are emptying our house of all the junk and detritus in order to get us ready for our big move in June. They are sorting through 20 years of stuff that has amassed over that time. I suspect that there are boxes that came from Brantford when we moved here which were never unpacked. The kids have sorted out their old rooms and now some of our junk is their junk. Nathaniel took home a huge tub of action figures which I am sure delighted  Declan and Naomi, our grandchildren. But we really have no one to blame for the amount of junk than ourselves. Both the sunroom (now immaculately empty) and the garage became easy dumping grounds for whatever we weren’t using or didn’t need. Things pile up over 20 years and after a while I don’t think we even saw any of it anymore. The vast majority of it is worthless garbage. And we don’t need to take any of of it with us to Whitby.

                In our text, Paul is looking back on all the religious baggage that he has stored up over his lifetime up to then and   he came to the conclusion that it really wasn’t worth anything. He uses words like worthless or garbage which, when more literally translated, means something far stronger; “dog dung” is how the Message Bible translates it.  I don’t think he was saying that his life was worthless but that all that religious weight of rules, regulations, proscriptions and dogmas (i.e. the Law) were of no value in living a life in Jesus Christ. Mind you, Paul never gave up on the Law but he put it in in its proper, secondary perspective, “so that I could gain Christ and become one with him.”

                It can be very difficult to put the past behind us. We tend to have good (?) memories and we collect and hold on to all sorts of worthless stuff. We hold grudges, for example. We hang on to hurts, insults and broken promises. I know that this is not really what Paul is writing about but I think it can be applied. Sometimes, we can’t let go of old biases, prejudices, assumptions or judgments. We continue to see others in stereotypes and old paradigms. We cling to tired old religious doctrines and dogmatic labels. We fail to discard that which weighs us down, takes up room in our minds and hearts, and piles up to our detriment. There comes a time when we need to let go and let Christ free us from all that garbage. “So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.” (Galatians 5:1)

                When we make our move to Whitby, it will be a new start, free of all that stuff we have accumulated over the years. When we are in Christ, we let go of the past; we let go of emotional baggage; we let go of old physic and spiritual damages; we let go of failures and disappointments; we let go of Sin. It is freeing. It is liberating. It is redemptive. “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being!” (2 Corinthians 5: 17)

                It may seem daunting (our move to a new home has seemed that way, at times) but  to let go and let Christ become the centre of your life offers you a whole new future, rich in possibilities and opportunities, especially to love, to do good, to fill your new space with harmony, joy, hope and love.

                Let’s make room for God’s best: “Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full—pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.” (Matthew 6:38)

                Where did I put that broom?

Dale