Giving a Lifetime Away

I’ve now reached the stage where I’m disposing of all the tackle I’ve carted around with me for decades. I've come to see it as a real waste of space.

There’s very little that I keep merely out of sentiment; I am simply not the sentimental type. Rather I peer into the storage boxes from time to time and reason, “This could come in handy sometime – I’d better hang on to it“. Utility is normally my only compelling excuse for clinging onto something.

Sometimes this keeping of things because they might be needed one day turns out to be wise. In my present home and circumstances I’ve been more fulfilled and involved in many ways than I have been for decades. I find myself trotting out garden tools that have been sitting around uselessly for all those years. Now at last they really come into their own. I think how foolish I would have been to give them away at a time when my garden was small and I didn’t have the energy to work it anyway. Many other tools, gadgets and devices, however, have had their day and are just gathering dust.

I could try to make money out of them – monetise, as they call it – by selling them on eBay, but frankly I just can’t be bothered. There is an easy way to dispose of them and that is the impressive series of jumble sales that is going on at the Village Hall Saturday after Saturday in the run-up to Christmas. What is to me a discarded piece of junk may well turn out to be somebody’s ideal Christmas present or just fit right in their scheme of things.

All sorts of Bible texts come to mind as I carry out this reassessment of my possessions and shed all this formerly precious stuff:

“... we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world” (1 Timothy 6:7 ESV)

“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary” (Luke 10:41-42)

“... let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus …” (Hebrews 12:1-2)

And so it goes on.

There may be the odd thing that I really end up missing. I think of a particular book I gave away that I suddenly find I could do with having back. Yet 99% of the time I simply don’t miss the stuff that I hoarded so assiduously for so long.

Another way of getting rid of clutter like papers, photos and books is to digitise it. I have spent hours scanning and storing photos on disk, where they take up no space at all. The other storage which takes up no physical space is what stored in your mind. If I can treasure up Bible passages and hymns in my memory, I have a really useful store that I can draw on at need. It enables me to think healthy thoughts and perhaps say helpful words.

Even memory needs a certain amount of housekeeping and management, though. There are bad memories that I wish to chase away. Jesus teaches us that it is then important immediately to fill the available (mental) space with good things. May He grant that what is uppermost in my mind when I reach my last is wholesome thoughts as I prepare to receive His welcome beyond the river.