Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if you could lay out all your thoughts, memories, and life experiences on your front lawn to walk through and consider. I imagine it would be much like the experience of moving. Tona and I have been helping others move for the last two weeks.

Moving is like time travel through a museum. All your possessions are artifacts that you can date by year or decade. The fad buys of 2000 that are replaced by the new fad by 2005 and again in another group of years. Families with children can measure time by the toys that they still have, even after they have recycled other toys to friends with kids. Kitchenware, utensils, and appliances speak of the change of diet, cooking ability, and popular cooking fads. One toaster is plain metal. The next is colorful and stylishly rounded. The third has Grogu (Baby Yoda) emblazoned on the side. All three toasters work, and all three are boxed for the move. There are toaster ovens, crock pots, and instant pots. Each item trending in its own time zone and now an ongoing legacy of the family life in time.

There are no end of surprises as all the darkest corners and the least visited bottom-of-the-storage-places are unearthed like an archeologist who finds treasures forgotten or misplaced. The surprises trigger the memories of how you had to have it, used it once, and left to be covered by the next have-to-haves that ended in the same closet. Sorting through the archival treasures is like tripping through the tyrannical appetites that were found to be as temporary and transient as a breeze. You might even be amazed at how far you went out of your way to get that thing that just as suddenly became something of little or no value. You can see yourself, your appetites, your priorities reflected in all the stuff you have accumulated and especially the stuff you accumulated and kept.

People look at us and see our house, our possessions, our actions, our thoughts and words. They can see us more plainly than we can see ourselves at times.To them it may be like seeing all my stuff out on the lawn ready to be packed and trucked. These thoughts increase my prayer life. I want people to see that there is more than just me. The Lord has, is, and will be working on this life I call a home and all its possessions and being. It is not just the archives, but it is the present and the future. God is alive with His changes, moving me forward. I am not alone.