Prayer - October 5, 2008

Prayer – Sunday, Oct. 5, 2008

There it was … a simple sign beside the road
“Estate Sale” – turn right …
I wonder what happened?

Everything goes in an estate sale.
The dining room table – many a Thanksgiving Dinner there … laughter and tears … Dad’s old jokes and Mother’s apple pie …
Glass goblets held high to toast a loved one …
Linen napkins used for the best occasions …
China and silver for company …
I wonder what happened.

The bed … where folks slept,
Or tossed and turned …
Where love was made …
Or unmade …

Look at all the clothes …
Retro … but that was the style then …
A teen girl buys that lovely old dress and hat … where in the world will she wear it? At a local dance club late Saturday night?
She’ll be the hit of the hip …

Boxes of knickknacks and doodads …
Pencils sharpened a few times too many …
Ballpoint pens from a furniture store out of business 15 years ago …

And shoes … men’s shoes … brown and black …
Women’s shoes … red and green and blue … pumps and flats, heels high and heels low …
Jewelry, beads and bangles … and some very nice pieces …

Books … murder mysteries and pulp romance … an old set of Encyclopedia Britannica … Sandburg’s biography of Lincoln …

Records … 33 1/3 … even some 45s in the bottom of the box … big bands and philharmonics … Frank Sinatra and Pat Boone …

The stuff of life, LORD.
We accumulate so much of it …
We store it, we catalogue it; we unpack it and repack it … we don’t know what to do with it.

We give it to the kids, and they don’t know what to do with it either.
We give it to the Salvation Army, and we hope that someone will enjoy what we enjoyed 25 years ago …
We have a garage sale, and someone buys what we bought at a garage sale two summers ago.
We’ve got stuff, LORD.

Piled high, piled deep …
Stuff used well, and some never used at all.
Why did we buy it?
What were thinking?

Jesus our LORD …

You remind us to go slow on stuff …
That life is more than clothing and more than food …
You remind us to treasure infinite things, eternal things …
Heavenly things … things that moths can’t eat and rust won’t stain … and to put our heart there …
The good stuff, the right stuff … the best stuff.

O LORD, help us make good choices …

At the end, LORD,
A good estate sale:
Faith,
Hope and love.

Grace,
Mercy and peace.

Comfort and courage.
Commitment and conscience …
A life well-lived,
Loving God and
Loving of neighbor …

The best stuff of all … the best stuff of all …

In the name of our LORD Jesus Christ who taught us to pray, saying, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name …