From trash to treasure :)

I just had an interesting conversation with my kids about how they treat each other when they’re struggling or have had some failure. I’ve noticed that they often don’t want their siblings to know about an area in which they’re struggling because they don’t want to get teased or picked on. Sound familiar? I’ve been thinking about this problem not only with my kids but also with my brothers and sisters in Jesus. Far too often I’ve seen Christians “eat their own”& when we see this kind of treatment it makes us distrustful & reluctant to share about areas in which we struggle or have failure. In my mind, this is a super effective strategy the devil uses to divide & conquer. Jesus personifies redemption & when His disciples failed & had shortcomings, He didn’t toss them in the trash & sever His relationship with them. Jesus is in the restoration & redemption business. As His follower, I want to let His redemption & restoration flow not only to me, but also through me. Just some friendly food for thought on this happy Wednesday 😀

getting rid of toilets :)

 I had a movie moment from “The Help” yesterday when I took the trash out.  We recently had to replace a few toilets in our house for various reasons & I hauled the broken ones to the curb, along with our other trash, hopeful that the trash guys would pitch the “thrones” into a place of higher glory ,)  Thankfully, we kept the old toilets in the boxes that the new toilets came in, hoping to avoid offending the sensitivities of more delicate people.

With all that being said, I thought about how our really nice trash guys come by once a week & haul away the collection of trash that the five of us have accumulated over the course of a week.  Maybe I take this trash maintainence for granted because it’s just part of life’s routines – which has started me to thinking.  I think that from time to time, we need to clean out the trash in our thoughts & stuff that corrupts our hearts / minds by allowing the Holy Spirit to shine truth into our lives & de-clutter the accumulation of dribble, froth, deception, dysfunction & general refuse that we can accumulate in our hearts & minds.  Paul says that whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely & a good report that we are to think on these things – the rest can get thrown into the trash & washed away by Jesus’ blood 🙂