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I find myself on the edge of being a hoarder of magazines, its true - I just love looking at them and day dream about what I could do with my house or garden; love looking at all the things I could make for dinner & dessert, or all the things I could do to transform my hair and body to look fabulous. Its fun at first, but then as I collect all these ideas - I get pretty tired and frustrated by all the work and money it would take to accomplish these great ideas I have decided to do, so I put it off and wait until tomorrow, maybe... And then its tomorrow - I check the mail and devour the new magazine that arrived - and I have all these new ideas - which are fun and exciting... I think you get the idea. Maybe you do that too? with something else?
I also struggle with letting go of all these magazines once I have "finished" with them .... what if THAT magazine I just threw away was the magazine I needed to transform my house, my kitchen, my body... and I just tossed it aside - to fill up the trash... (which I have an obsession with trying to recycle everything and I hate feeling like I might be cluttering up a landfill or recycle place with all my stuff.... thats a story for another day- ha!)
This might seem like a silly example to you - but this is one of the things I was thinking about when the teacher asked us to think about something we hold on to; that is perishable.
In reflection of this, I was thinking, there are a lot of things in my life - that I work very, very hard to keep... that are perishable. And the things that are imperishable are freely given to me enjoy.
I find I focus a lot of my time, energy and frustration over keeping the house clean, working, money, student loan debt, exercising, struggles with my weight, struggles with relationships, other people (especially how others drive) the future, politics, weather ... I am usually frustrated over how dissatisfied these things actually make me and how they end up not looking like anything I want them to look like, even when I try really hard! But all these things are perishable... one day they will all be gone!
My hope is that as the Lord continues to show me I have been focused on the perishable, it will be replaced by pure joy in the imperishable, and that my heart will continue to be conformed to a great rejoicing; because the Lord has given me new hope through the resurrection - and an inheritance that can never perish! This is where true joy and satisfaction flows from. So, even as everything I have today, including my magazines full of paint colors and hair styles - are taken away tomorrow I will still be filled with inexpressible joy over all the Lord has done for me!
I leave you with a few passages that have spoken to me:
Job 19:25-27
I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God;
I myself will see him
with my own eyes —I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!
1 Peter 1:3-9
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade —kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire —may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
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