Cleaning Out & Cleaning Up
On the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend I endeavored to clean out the parsonage storage room (closet space at the end of the carport). While used routinely for storing yard implements, barbeque supplies, and some tools, it had fallen into neglect generally. I knew, though, that there was random spare “flotsam and jetsam” in the space, items that would be welcomed as donations for the upcoming Trash and Treasures Sale, so I woke up on Saturday morning and leapt into action (perhaps a bit of an exaggeration).
It was a good thing that I started early – it took all day to get it done. The space was in worse shape than I had realized. Leaves and pine straw had blown under the doors and the floor was covered. Critters of various sorts had left me the many blessings of the evidence of their presence. I found myself reaching for my yard work gloves, which turned out to be necessary to keep all manner of gum and goo from getting under my fingernails. One of the realizations that quickly came to me was that I didn’t really have the tools that I needed to get the job done well and/or right.
But I carried on anyway, and shortly found myself corrected in one of my assumptions. In a large plastic bin that was sitting on the floor of the store room – which had been sitting in that same spot on the floor of the store room since June of 2010 when we moved in to the parsonage – I found several really nice and practically brand new gardening tools. One of those tools was a narrow headed extension rake, the exact tool that I was earlier feeling that I was needing and wishing that I had. It was perfect for scraping the leaves, gum, and goo out from the corners of the floor and from between the wall studs. And, it was there all along.
And there, of course, is the message and the lesson. A question arises: how many times have we started to do something, and then held back (or even quit entirely) because of a feeling of being overwhelmed about not having what we need to complete the task? Has that ever happened to you? Has that ever happened with us as a congregation? Well it almost happened with me last Saturday, but I was fortunate (blessed?) to find that I really already DID HAVE what was needed to get the job done.
Do we have some cleaning out and/or cleaning up to do? Do we have some things that we want to see done, to make things better or more effective for God’s work through us here at Oakmont? Are we wondering if we have what it will take, to “get the job done?” Guess what!! We already have it. The tools that we need, the resources, God has already given us. The question is not whether we “have” it. The question is whether we have the faith to seek it, find it, and use it.
Blessings and peace!
Lawton
