Things

Home safe in Ireland, 470 miles under my belt for part one of the journey. My comment in the last post on me being a not so fit manual labourer proved well founded. I was exhausted after all the driving, packing, driving on Saturday. The journey up to Scotland was uneventful. Being a bank holiday weekend in the UK the usual lorries and trucks were replaced by cars pulling caravans, boats, trailer tents etc. All going to either the Lake District in England or further north to Scotland.

It was a good job I took the car up to 'help' Gillian remove her stuff from the flat. The car was full by the time we had finished packing and there was plenty left over for her Scottish friends to look after, until she returns to Scotland next February. How so much 'stuff' had been accumulated over the three years she spent in Stirling I will never know. Still it was an improvement over her sister Jennifer who required three car loads when she removed the contents of her flat at the end of her degree course.

It got me thinking how we accumulate things in our lives over the years. (Not when I was carrying the boxes, then I was more concerned with the condition of my back). I got to thinking that some things we acquire are useful for many years, and many other things we use for a short time and then becomes clutter.

Now I am a person who does not like to throw out ANYTHING. Whereas Hazel my wife is the opposite. If an item is no longer of any use? It's gone! (I like to keep myself useful)!!!!

As a child Gillian would ask me "Tell me what it was like in the olden days daddy"? So I am about to go back into the 'olden' days. When I was 15 I left home to start an apprenticeship working for the Royal Navy as a Airframe / Engine Fitter in Belfast, and then three years later went to England as a Technician Apprentice for a further two years.

I look at 15 year olds nowadays and looking back I wonder how I ever survived those times, I knew nothing about life all. We have a saying in Ireland about somebody who knows nothing about life or a particular subject! We say that person "Is wet behind the ears"!

Well I was really wet behind the ears, a potential lamb to the slaughter. But, little did I know it, the Lord was there protecting and guiding me on this start of my working life adventure, even though I did not recognise it as his doing back then)! I must tell of the events that led my to getting my apprenticeship in another story.

Since the completion of my apprenticeship I have kept all my tools and all my apprentice notebooks. Over the years Hazel has asked me "do you need these books"? to which I would usually reply "Yes! you never know when they might become useful". But a couple of years ago she made an 'executive decision' and threw them all out without telling me. How did I find out? Did I eventually find that I needed them, never having looked at them once since 1970? No, I noticed that they were not were I had left them and then enquired of their whereabouts. I realised that I would never have never looked at them, and that they were unlikely to become a family heirloom and I found it funny, not annoying that they were gone.

We hold onto so much clutter in our lives. I pass by a wetsuit hanging in the store room upstairs in the house I am sure the rubber has perished on the 35 year old wetsuit, but I will never try it on as know it would not fit me. I have gained a few pounds since I last wore it over 25 years ago. OK! I have gained LOTS of pounds since then.

But it is the clutter in our minds, that is more important than the cultter in our possessions. We feed our minds and thoughts through daily news bulletins, the daily 'world' view focusing people on self, the adverts an television promoting self advancement, self pleasing, self serving, self over all others.

The focus on improving the outward appearance rather than the inner man. Young girls trying to look like these 'stick thin' models, young men trying to emulate their 'idols', be they pop singers, movie stars or sports personalities.

Psa 24:4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, Nor sworn deceitfully.

The world system promoting other God's before the true God in the minds of men and women.

Deu 11:16 Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them,

The only thing of REAL lasting value that we should desire to possess is the Lord himself. All things that we cherish to-day will eventually burn. Our Lord is our greatest possession, he is our salvation, he is our inheritance.

Finally ............ a thought for to-day

No matter where you go, God goes with you.