Six workable irons stood together on a shelf in her garage, silent witnesses to the futility of her life.
It was a yard sale of mammoth proportions.
For our small community of only several hundred people, it was the event of the year (around 1986), and it provided stuff for yard sales for years to come. I imagine that the items from that sale are still being circulated in yard sales to this day. It all started when a lady died in our church. Well, she didn’t pass away during the service, (Dan regularly puts people to sleep but doesn’t kill them off!), but she fainted while he was praying. I remember it as if it were yesterday, yet it was over twenty-five years ago when we served a small country church. Maybe she cried out, I don’t know, but I turned my head from the third row from the front on the right where I always sat with the kids, and saw her go down. Several of the men in the church saw her fall, too, and they were quick to catch her. In fact, I don’t think she hit the carpet.
Dan was praying.
He knew something was happening, something of dire import, but he didn’t want to disturb people and cause a general panic, so he went on praying in his calm way.
The old church in Ekalaka, MT which is now gone. ca 1987
A lot went on in that church when Dan prayed.
One time during the summer, when the door was open, a cat strolled in. I saw it coming under the rows of pews, its tail up, looking for a friendly hand or probably a hand-out. I tried to catch it when it came under my pew, but it was too fast for me. Peeking from under partially closed eyelids, I had to smother a laugh as it caused a little stir as it made its way forward, almost like a wave in a stadium. Then it was under the pew of a family of four little girls. Would they get it? They didn’t. At last I rose, captured him (or her), and carried the cat down the aisle. Dan looked up from his prayer and saw me exiting with a tail protruding from under my arm! Anyway, this little lady was carried out without much ado and taken to the hospital. She was in the hospital for several days and never recovered. She lived in a small house in town and her only relatives was a niece and nephew who lived about 100 miles away and who had never come to see her. They wanted the house and some of the larger furniture, but they didn’t want the stuff in the house. So they gave it to the church and the ladies decided (with great glee!) that we could have a yard sale and give the money to missions. I had never been in her house. When I stepped in that first morning with rolled-up sleeves and the feeling that I was in for a lot of work, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The house was clean and neat, don’t get me wrong, but as we started pulling things out of the closets, cupboards, dresser drawers and the large shop/garage building outside, we discovered more stuff than we ever thought possible for one person to accumulate.
A crew of three of four ladies spent eight hours a day for a week sorting, pricing and boxing the things in that house.
For the sale, we filled a huge shop building with long tables groaning with the items that were crowded together on top of the table and also under the tables! The men continued to bring more and more boxes by truckloads. A lot of it could be labeled antiques — radios, flatirons, paintings, dressers, movie cameras, phonographs and records. There were wigs, hats, dresses, shoes, stockings, tatted tablecloths and doilies, curtains, appliances, jewelry, linens. When the men brought in fresh things, people swarmed the truck and bought things before they could even get them unloaded.
Vicki, Sherry, Ginger and Brian, ca 1986
Dan wanted to put a 25 cents price tag on everything to make it easy,
but the ladies shooed him out of the building. We made over $3,000 for missions that weekend — a good amount for a week’s work.
But all that stuff made me think. It was all boxed and stored in her house, possessions she could never let go of and could never use to bless others.
If she could speak from heaven, I wonder what she would say. Maybe it would go something like this: This was my life. I had it all neatly washed, folded, stored and stacked. But I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t give it away.
I had to have it. I always thought that maybe someday I could use it, but that someday never came. My possessions became my life. I clung to them, worshipped them, and found my security and safety in them. They gave me a sense of importance.
They were my little gods.
Like all idols and false gods, they demanded so much of me.
They drained me. I see now that they became the albatross around my neck. I couldn’t serve God, give anything away, or use anything for God’s service. I had to keep everything safe. I hoarded it all and refused to let the gifts of God flow through my fingers to become a river of life to others.
Now it is all gone.
I imagine it’s in someone else’s garage, stored in a box. But I came empty-handed to the gates of heaven as a pauper. I thought I was rich on earth because I had so much stuff. Now I see it was all fool’s gold, useless trappings of a life lived for myself and not for God.
Oh, I was a good Christian. I went to church, gave my tithe, did my duty when I was called upon. I taught a Sunday School class when I was younger and attended ladies’ meetings. I remember making quilts for the missionaries, serving tea to the ladies, saving soup can labels for the school. Yet I lived in bondage to my houseful of clutter.
It was a little world I lived in because I couldn’t venture too far from my treasures. While a big world cried and died and went to hell, I sat and tatted and drank tea. I gossiped with my friends, played games, and did my little projects around the house.
Jesus asked His disciples when they wanted to feed a crowd, “What is that in your hand?” They produced five loaves and two fishes from a little boy’s lunch. The little boy was willing to give up his lunch. He knew he wasn’t going to eat that day. Yet he was willing to surrender what he had, no matter how small it was. What if he had kept it and selfishly ate it privately? Would the disciples have found someone else’s lunch? Or would the crowds have gone hungry?
God wanted to use what I had for His glory.
He wanted me to lavishly share the gifts He had given me with others to bless them, to show His love, to help people who were in need.
How many lives could I have touched if I’d given away my irons, tablecloths, towels, dishes and pans?
How much good could have been accomplished if I’d opened my doors and had guests share my beautiful little home?
How many people would have been won to the Kingdom if I’d given away my treasures?
Those are questions I cannot answer because for me it is too late. For you, it is not.
The Preacher (Solomon) wrote, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” (Eccles. 1:1) Maybe he didn’t have six workable irons sitting together on a shelf in his garage, but he had enough of life’s goods to know that the accumulation of material possessions doesn’t spell satisfaction or success. A growing business in our country these days is storage units.
Have you noticed how many there are around where you live? You see many large, expensive homes with a double-car garage and yet the cars are sitting outside it.
Why? Because they have so much stuff packed inside the garage, they can’t park their cars, trucks, boats, RVs, 4-wheelers, trailers, and motorcycles in it. And besides that, they probably had to rent a storage unit! In a recent TV ad I saw the other day while waiting to watch a news video on my computer, the huge word MORE filled the screen.
The ad went on to show picture after picture of huge amounts of things — a closet crammed with thousands of canvas shoes, a cookie too large to fit into a glass of milk, and the abundance of many other things. The commercial went on to ask, “Do you want MORE?”
It was almost sickening to think that with all we have in America today, we want more. More and larger TVs. More cars. More clothes. More fun times. More money.
Where does this amassing of possessions stop? It can stop with you. Right now.
GIVE IT AWAY!
Take a look around your house. How much stuff do you have that you never look at, that you are storing and keeping for a “rainy day,” and that you really don’t want. Have a yard sale and get rid of some of your stuff.
Use the money to finance a missionary, to buy some Bibles to give away, to help with a ministry at your church.
My challenge to you today is: destroy the god of possessions, the little idols that are draining you of life and vitality. Here is something you can do right now.
Choose five things you have in your house and give them away. Try it and see how it makes you feel. I just did it. It made me feel GREAT!
II Cor. 9:7 says, “Each one must do just as he has purposed in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” The word translated “cheerful” in this verse literally means “hilarious.” Do you want to have a hilarious time? Give something away!
When you die and your kids come to clean out your house, will they find your treasures boxed, stored and wasted?
Or will you leave behind you a legacy of giving, love, and grace? Learn to give lavishly, freely, with an open hand and a joyful heart. Then watch to see how God uses your gifts to bless others.
What fun we had at this church!
Let’s keep it going.
Pay forward. Do a deed of unexpected kindness. Show love without any returns.
Start a legacy of blessing. Write me a comment and tell me a story of how God blessed your life because you gave lavishly of your time, possessions, or talents.
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