Hard feelings and Big things.

My family and I recently purchased a home and, as we excitedly await the end of escrow, we are also diligently prepping our home to sell. We decided that before we pack a single box, we would need to put in some serious time purging our current home. We’ve been in our current home for six years and it is amazing what you can accumulate in such a short amount of time! Today, we began and spent hours in dusty forgotten cupboards clearing out spaces and deciding to keep, donate, or trash items. After hours of purging and hauling off items, we returned to satisfyingly clutter-free spaces. "Wow," I said to my husband. "Why didn’t we do this years ago?" Why did we let the excess accumulate until it was absolutely necessary to take care of it? We could have been enjoying all of this beauty all along!

As I considered this more I began to think about how the same can happen with our hearts; in the dusty forgotten corners of our thoughts. So often we shove a feeling away and tell ourselves we will deal with it later. Instead of facing it head-on and confronting the mess, we shove it in a drawer or behind a closet door. Jesus said in John 16:33, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” Our lives were not meant to be trouble-free but we can make peace with our troubles because of He who overcame the world!

Lately, we have been faced with big things – big feelings, big obstacles, big opinions, big issues. It would be so much easier to ignore that it is all happening and neatly tuck the feelings away to deal with later but at some point, we will need to dust off that box and deal with it. Why not make that time now? Let’s live in the fruit of the hard work it will take to work through the hard things and find peace through the big things.

Justine Medeiros, Children's Ministry Director