4.11.12

Proverbs 12:27 Lazy people don't even cook the game they catch, but the diligent make use of everything they find.

My Thoughts

In America we want more and more and more.  Commercials are designed to tell us that we need more. One cell phone comes out..and before we can blink there is a new version...and we want that one too! We fill our houses so full of "stuff." Then we have yard sales, or we rent storage buildings to put the things we don't use in. My step dad had like 5 hammers... instead of finding his he would go buy a new one... lots of his tools were that way... it was just eaiser to get a new one than hunt the old one.

I remember reading the Little House on the Praire books.... on Christmas the girls got their very own cups... they treasured those cups!  Their mom had this one china doll that sat on the mantle...each time they moved that doll was carefully packed away...it was treasured!

We have become people that have so much that we don't get the joy of treasuring anything...there is too much around us to pick out one treasure in our homes. 

When I was a little girl... I remember going to town and getting 5 dresses to start school in... one for each day of the week. My mom was proud she could get me those 5 dresses... And I had a favorite too...it was plaid...with a white collar and a big red bow.

Christmas was about being together...Santa brought the biggest present you would get and a couple of small presents.... then the presents from other people were things like a new hair bow or a fancy bottle of bubble bath.  But there was always, always one present you treasured most..and it came straight from Santa. Now children get so much they don't even have a favorite thing...they can't tell you what they got last year for Christmas.

We have lost sight of being diligent... of treasuring each and every thing God gives us. We spend so much time making money...then spending more than we make...because we have to have, have, have.... we have so much yet we enjoy so little.

I remember my step dad telling of his dad...walking to and from work during the Great Depression so they could have enough gas that summer to go on vacation.... on his way from work he would stop at this sight where they were building something...and pick up the cast off pieces of wood... he would bring those pieces of wood home and sand them and make them perfect..each piece of wood. That Christmas Santa brought a beautiful set of building blocks.  His dad was diligent to use what he found to make Christmas special.  And today...years after a man I never met has been gone... years after my step-dad has been gone.... even my children are grown...I still treasure that story. I treasure those blocks that were never placed in my hands. The memory of them are special to me. What stories have I given my children?

We complain because we don't have enough time these days... mom's and dad's have to go to work so families can "have."  I wonder how much our world would change... how much better it would be if we all became diligent...if we treasured each life around us... if we started learning to make time for each other instead of making time for things... if we stopped and treasured each thing that comes into our lives as a special gift that God has placed there for us to have.  We have lost our diligence...and in the process we have lost our time with family and friends... we have even given away chances to make beautiful memories. 

I wonder if God cries when He looks down at the people we have become? The thought makes me so want to simplify my life...so that I can really notice and enjoy all that God has given me!