Warmer Weather + Junk =

Spring has officially decided to stay and day by day it's getting warmer. With the combination of those two things and the deep seeded need in us to 'spring clean'...you know what that means...It's garage sale season!

I find it funny...here we are each spring, going through our closets and storage rooms, deciding what to sell, donate or simply get rid of and then we go off to buy stuff from other people who are trying to sell, donate or simply get rid of the stuff they've cleaned out. In the wake of 'cleaning out', it seems we just can't help but collect more. Garage sales truly prove that one man's garbage is another man's treasure!

And it's also funny if you have kids. They want to get in on the action too, so they go through their things and come out with a box mostly full of Happy Meal toys. They have grand dreams of buying PlayStation's and XBOX's with the riches they just know they're going to get and actually look at you confused and disappointed at the $2.50 you give them at the end of the day!

So, here I am today sitting at our own garage sale...have I mentioned that I HATE getting ready to DO a garage sale? The sorting, the folding, the pricing, the setting up, the tearing down...yeah, pretty much everything but the actual taking of other people's money. You see, it's NEVER a simple thing...you HAVE to go through every drawer, every closest and every box in your storage closet and look at each item and think...Hmm, I haven't seen this item in over 3 years and even tho it's sat unused in this box and up until now I've completely forgotten that I owned it, there MIGHT be a chance I might need it within the next 5 + years...Thank heavens Lisa and I are NOT like that...well, not to any extreme that is!

Now as I said, I'm sitting here at our own garage sale, typing this BLOG and watching people come and go between our neighbor's house and ours. Each year at this time our entire town does a city wide garage sale and people from all over the area come through. So far we've sold an old refrigerator, large dog kennel and our treadmill (so long New Years resolution!) and many other smaller items. I like to price items to move; I figure that if I took the time to sort through all of our CRAP, that means we don't want to keep it and it does me no good to spend this time just to put the stuff back into storage. The worst is this...putting stuff out to sell at your garage sale that you purchased from garage sales the year before...I have to admit that we're guilty of that!

One guy came up, said that he recently had a heart attack and needed the treadmill to help him in his recovery. So, I was happy to help him load the thing up in the back of his truck. Then there's the family who drove up with their black lab in the back seat. Sitting there with a stuffed teddy bear in his mouth...not chewing it mind you...just sitting there like it was his security blanket!

I'm thinking next time I'm just going to put a sign in the front yard stating 'Garage Sale, Knock On Door'. Then I'll have the 'Pickers' just go from room to room in our house and if they find something they like, they can ask and who knows...maybe I'll sell it!


~ V

Calling Your Wife Bub...

I call my wife 'Babe'...in fact, I call her that ALOT! I know most of you probably have a pet name or nick name you call your significant other...Babe is the one I use. Once I called her 'Baby Girl', but she quickly put the kabash on that for two reasons 1) I call my youger daughter that and 2) 'I'm not 10 years old' as she would say.

So...today I finished dressing and came out to the kitchen where she was doing something on her computer, I grabbed my lunch bag (yes...adults can have lunch bags too...) and said; 'Ok Bub, I'm out of here...' obviously I meant to say BABE...except that BUB came out instead. I knew what I said and, hoping that she was too engrossed in what she was doing, continued on with getting ready to leave. Three full seconds had past and I was silently rejoicing inside when she said, 'Bub??? I'm your Buddy???' to which I replied, 'Yeah, I was hoping you didn't catch that.' She said, 'Oh, I caught it alright! Since when am I your BUDDY??'

Yeah...nice...

~ (not your Buddy) V

Separated...

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39


“From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land…the earth shook and the rocks split…” Matthew 27:45
 
Christ's deep agony on the cross was not from the physical pain or the rejection by man. The deep agony was from the separation that occurred when the wrath of the Father was poured out upon the Son…His Beloved.


I doubt that any of us can understand the depth of the love that binds the Triune nature of God together. It is a “oneness” that goes way beyond that which He designed for a man and a woman. Even though God planned for us to participate in, and experience, the “profound mystery” as Paul describes it, it is, no doubt, but a speck in comparison to the love and the union of the Father and the Son.

Jesus said they were “one”.


…and they had been for all eternity…and they will be for all eternity.

But on the cross, Jesus was separated from the Father when He bore the penalty for our sins...the eternal separation from God. That was the price and Jesus paid it.

And He cried out “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”


Many have said that Jesus died from a broken heart. I don’t know whether or not this is true. But die He did…for the penalty of sin includes death. His blood was shed…for there is no remission of sin without it.

But His real cry of agony on the cross came from being separated from the One He loved.

We experience that, too, when we are long separated from those we love. But this is nothing compared to the magnitude of the separation that Jesus bore for us.

But why did He?

Because He loves you…really loves YOU.

And that deep, deep love meant paying the penalty on our behalf so that there might never...EVER be a separation between the Lover and the loved...the Groom and His bride...the Shepherd and His sheep.


Who can fathom the depth of this? Paul was given the words to help us grasp it:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” He then lists the possibilities and the answer to each is understood:


Trouble? No...

Hardship? No...

Persecution? No...

Famine? No...

Nakedness? No...

Danger? No...

Sword? No...

Death? No...

Life? No...

Angels? No...

Demons? No...

The present? No...

The future? No...

Any powers? No...

Height? No...

Depth? No...

Anything else in ALL of creation? No...

Have we gotten the point yet? In case not, he sums it up this way:

“NOTHING will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

...I guess that means NOTHING...

Remember...when you feel that you're at the end of your rope...that no one cares...that you've been beaten and left for dead...that everything you've done has come to naught...that no one loves you...He does.
 
In the presence of something so awesome, my weak little “thanks” seems somewhat inadequate.


~ V

Just One Word...

WHAT?

~ V