DUMP THE JUNK!

About five years ago I bought a new wheelbarrow for the purpose of gardening. However, this spring when I went out to use my wheelbarrow, I found it was useless.

It was useless because of the television, the one that had stopped working a long time ago. I needed to get rid of it; it was useless junk from my past. It was super heavy, too big a burden to carry, so I loaded it onto the wheelbarrow to transport it and then I got sidetracked and left it—for two months!

Recently, I needed to use the wheelbarrow to move dirt as it was time to garden, but when I went out to get it, I realized that I couldn’t put anything in it unless I emptied it.

It wasn’t until I took hold of the handles, guided the wheelbarrow to the barn and unloaded the television that I could use it again for gardening, its original purpose.

IT’S A NEW DAY!

I think our minds are like my wheelbarrow (or any vessel for that matter). So long as we are filled with junk from the past, we are useless in the present.

So often we begin each day with associations to the ones gone before. Each day is a new beginning, but ONLY if we empty the wheelbarrow. There is a passage in the Book of Psalms where David says, “This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.” He is telling us that he started over, every morning with gratitude.

There is also a passage in the Tao Te Ching that talks about how the usefulness of a vessel is in the emptiness of the vessel. Only when my wheelbarrow was emptied of the past, could I use it in the present.

THERE IS ONLY NOW.

In the Book of Hebrews Paul says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen.” NOW. Not yesterday, not twenty years ago, not this morning. Right now. Faith works in the present. It is in the present that we call those things into existence that we may not see with our physical eyes, but if we see them with our spirits, they have no choice but to manifest.

In Hebrews 11:3, Paul teaches us, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” The reference to the word of God here comes from an old Greek word, Rhema (hray-mah) and means a literal utterance, especially a narrative or a command. Solomon tells us that life and death are in the power of the tongue. In other words, when we speak of a thing or dwell on a thing, we draw that thing to ourselves.

If we hang onto negative narratives of the past, old junk, regardless of who put it there, we can’t move forward into today, we cannot know true peace and purpose. I know people who still live in their high school mentality, some who are holding thirty-year-old grudges, some who are hanging onto to pain from childhood, some who simply can’t move on because everyday they wake up with their wheelbarrows full of yesterday’s junk.

So long as we are wheeling around yesterday’s junk we can’t enjoy today’s treasures.

The usefulness of a vessel doesn’t lie in its fullness but in its continuously being emptied and refilled.