Well, we've talked about hoarding kindness, and hoarding mental garbage, and hoarding the past.  There's not much left, is there?  Or maybe there is.

Do you know someone who builds a fence around what they know to be true?  They hoard what they know and refuse to let go of any of it, much less take on some new knowledge.  One of the catalogues we get has a T-shirt in it that says, "When I was young, there were NINE planets".  Our world changes moment by moment, and while there are certain bits of knowledge that are everlasting, most of the rest of what we learned as children, or even last year, is subject to change.  

Some of it is fairly easy to adapt: we no longer use a rotary phone, so to even use the phrase "dial up" anything is out of date.  Few of us need the knowledge to adjust the horizontal or vertical hold on our television screen. (I'll wait while many of you look up that reference.) We've let go of the knowledge needed to adjust our typing for footnotes, or the need to have phone numbers memorized.  

But.  Some of us hoard other knowledge that needs to be tossed.  In fact, we hold on to that knowledge as if it were a definition of who we are.  We will fight, to the death, to keep that knowledge.  Even when it's no longer true.  Or perhaps was never true, but just accepted and believed.  

Behold, I tell you a truth: when we feel the most threatened by change, it is time to look at what we are holding onto with a death grip, to what we are hoarding.  More often that we would like to think, that knowledge was given to us by someone we love.  And we think that to jettison that knowledge means we are being unfaithful to that loved one.

Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about.  Because you do. Your grandfather told you that people shouldn't marry someone who is not of their race. Your grandmother told you women who work outside the home aren't good mothers. Your minister told you only certain people get God's love.  Your civics teacher told you that to be an American meant you had to think just one certain way.  Your uncle told you education would ruin your religion.

And worse.

Keep the love.  But examine, with eyes of an adult, what knowledge you hold on to.  If it no longer works, jettison it. If you have fewer answers than before, learn to live with the questions.

There is only one race - the human race.  Every family has to figure out for itself what works and what doesn't. God's love is not parametered by anything we think or say. Some people who love this country very much find fault with it. Jesus came to take away your sins, not your mind. Not all churches are the same.

So we've talked about hoarding mental garbage, and about hoarding kindness.  But wait - there's more.  How about letting go of some of your past?

Oh, not the good parts of your past.  It's important to remember your first crush from kindergarten, or the year you got the Barbie Dreamhouse.  It's important to remember your algebra. (I guess.  Of course, I never retained it for more than the time it took to take the tests.  I'm close to 60 and I've lived pretty okay without it.) You want to remember the smell of your grandmother's apple cake, and the sound of lawnmowers on Saturday mornings.  Good memories.

I mean the parts of your past that you hold onto that tie you down and impede your progress.  The parts that keep you a Victim.  The parts that show up in the midst of a good day, and remind you that you're really not worthy of that good day. Lousy memories.  Memories of getting chosen last for kickball, or eating alone in the cafeteria, or having someone you love leave you.  Those sort of memories don't help.

Unless.  You take them and turn them around to change your behaviour.


 If you've been chosen last at kickball, don't hoard that hurt; re-use that to challenge yourself to be the kind of person who watches for those on the sidelines and encourages them.


 If you've eaten alone in the cafeteria, don't hoard that hurt; take your tray and find someone else who's eating alone.


 If someone you love has left you, don't hoard that hurt; there are so very many ways to change that into positive and wonderful ways of reaching out to others, and also ways of being loving to yourself.


 We all know people who hoard the past, who can't seem to get off dead center, who continue to define themselves by something or some one that caused them pain in the past.  Don't be someone who hoards that hurt.  Go read John 16:33.  Go read 1 Peter 5:7.  Then go clean house, and start letting go of the past so that your future can begin.

We talked last week about how some people hoard mental garbage the way others hoard garbage and too much stuff in their houses.  But there's yet another way we hoard:

Often we hoard kindness.  

We fail to say an encouraging word to another because we're not in the mood.  Or because some other person wasn't nice to US, so we don't want to be nice to OTHERS. Because, you know, it's a contest.

We don't smile at a stranger because we're in a hurry.  Or because they look different. Because, you know, no one can make us.

We are in a conversation with someone, and listen only for their breath, which gives us a chance to say what it is we wanted to say.  Instead of being kind.  And just listening.  (Is it me?  Am I the only one who occasionally feels as if I've been slapped in the face when someone asks me how I'm doing, and if I respond, " You know, really, not too well", they reply, "Great! Glad to hear it.  I've had a lousy day; let me tell you about it.")

We wait for someone to be kind to us first.  Because, you know, that matters.

Behold, I tell you a truth:  kindness is not a commodity that will ever run out.  It's not as if we only have so many kind words or deeds in out life and we must ration them.  Really, the opposite is true: the more we give, the more we receive to give.   Because, you know, Jesus.

Have you ever seen one of those shows on TLC or A&E:  Hoarding, or Hoarders? The camera follows a poor soul around as a group of professionals try to get that soul to let go of stuff -- lots and lots of stuff.  Sometimes there is a (semi-) logical reason behind the collecting (though in truth did ANYONE think buying up Beanie Babies would send their kid to Harvard?), often the person has surrounded themselves with.......well, it's a church blog, so I'll opt for the word 'Junk'.

It is a real problem for some people, and I'm not belittling it in the least.  But I bring this up for a real reason:  we can sit in the comfort of our living room and ponder how others can live in a house that is filled with junk and, truly, garbage.  Without realizing, of course, that oftimes WE live in a house surrounded by garbage.

*Do you remember every slight every given you, and forget all the people who have been affirming to you?

*Do you lay awake at night and  focus on the ugly look someone gave you in line at Allen's IGA, rather than focus on the guy who helped you carry your groceries out to the car?

*Have you kept the one paper you got a "D" on, and thrown away all the "A"s and "B"s?

* Can you not get past your past, and continue to drag it around to every conversation, every opportunity, every new friend?

Then YOU, my friend, live in a house with garbage in it.  Quit hoarding!  Take from each bad experience what is essential for your growth, then toss the rest away.  There is no room for a real life if you keep all the past hoarded up.