Re-arranging things

As we were out taking care of some errands Thursday, my phone buzzed with a little warning.  It was the weather app I have for my Blackberry, and it was telling me that we had a “Freeze Warning” for the next couple of nights.  Now, I have the weather app on my phone to wake me up in case of a tornado outbreak, but to the phone, a “warning” is a “warning” so it dutifully started making noise and blinking at me.

So, after considering the implications of a freeze, we came home, and finally tackled shuffling things in the garage so that both cars can fit in there.  It’s been on my list for, well, the whole time we’ve lived here, but it just hasn’t been that critical.  However, when you’ve got two vehicles with more than 150,000 miles on them, weather protection is a good idea.

Meanwhile, in the process of rearranging, I found my hedge clippers, a missing battery charger, and a few other miscellaneous items that I couldn’t find, and had begun to suspect Almyra had some thieves with a bizarre set of theft desires.  I’m glad to report that this isn’t the case, rather I just misplaced things in the move.

Now, both cars are in the garage.  We’re working on the planned goal of giving away all of the too-small bicycles.  We do still have a purple bunkbed to pass on, as I am not sure if the friends from Alabama that wanted it, but just changed jobs and don’t own a truck probably can’t get it.  (If you’re headed to Bama anytime soon, specifically Jacksonville, and want to drop off a bunkbed, send me a message!)  It’s not totally perfect yet, but the garage has made some progress.

It’s actually a pretty good picture of life.  What?  Our lives are a garage?

No, but our lives are ordered (or disordered!) based on urgency.  Urgency is driven by what we value.

For example, I value the opportunity to sit with my family with light and heat and eat meals.  So, I need a certain amount of finances.  And if I have to expend my finances to repair/replace vehicles that would have frozen and broken down in the winter because I didn’t put them in the garage, well, now that’s a problem.

So, my values that rate my family highly required that I tackle (with much help!) addressing the garage situation with urgency.  When it was just about finding a hedge trimmer, it wasn’t urgent.  Why?  Sculpted hedges aren’t valued in my life.  Not at all.

In life, what we value should become what drives our actions, and sometimes that will require us to act with a driven urgency, even in tasks we aren’t particularly fond of, like cleaning a garage.  It’s not that there aren’t other things to do, even important things.  Rather, it’s that there are items and tasks that must be taken care of with marked urgency because of what we value.

This applies to life, to politics, to churches.  Really, to most everything.  If your political values prefer certain issues to others, you will urgently support a candidate even if they disagree with you in party or other, lesser issues.

In our churches, and in our Baptist cooperative work, the question that we must often ask is this: what do we value most?  As Christians, we should value most what our Lord Jesus Christ values, and then our actions should be of marked urgency in doing whatever will best accomplish those values.

Even if it means that dishes go unwashed so that garages be rearranged.

Doug