The Living Room Boxes
I walked into the living room and instantly realized I was in trouble. Boxes littered the room, stacked high, 75 of them. I knew this as I just purchased and moved the 75 boxes from my condo to my new home a two-bedroom apartment at the top of three flights of stairs. What was a 15-minute fix in previous moves - toss them in the garage, then to the recycle by the street the following Monday) Well, that wasn’t happening. I calculated again in my head as I stood on the third floor with no elevator, no dumpster within 200 yards…I would have to take one box at a time with the dog twice a day and it would take me six months to clear these boxes from my main living area. It actually took me seven because I didn’t account for bad weather. There were days when I woke up and walked in the kitchen for coffee and I could barely stand the sight of those boxes, reminding me of the chaos in my life. On other days at the end of a long, hard day, they were just irritating. Eventually, I got used to them as my new reality.
On the bad days I knew I could either accept the “glass is half full”… look at all that exercise I was getting, rather than focus on the “half-empty”…look at the mess. I needed to reorient my negative thinking and accept my less-than-stellar reality. What was God teaching me?
Remember the scene in Numbers when the children of Israel send out a team to scope out the new land the Lord has provided? Their opinions are divided into both positive and negative. Numbers 13:27-32 Caleb noted: “We entered the land you sent us to explore, and it is indeed bountiful country-a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is the kind of fruit it produces. 28 But the people there were powerful, and their towns large and fortified. We even saw giants there…!” Caleb spoke the rallying cry, 30 “Let’s go at once to take the land, we can certainly conquer it!” 31 But the other men who had explored the land disagreed, “We can’t go up against them! They are stronger than we are!” 32 So they spread a bad report…
Notice, the members of the reconnaissance team all saw the same thing. It was Caleb that had the faith to go forward despite the difficulties that lay ahead. He knew their towns were large, fortified and the warriors would be large and fierce, and yet Caleb knew the Lord was on their side so that when the time came to take those towns, God would provide. And He did.
Sometimes, I must accept the bad and the ugly in my life, and move forward. God’s plan always takes longer, is messy, and more difficult than we can ever imagine. It would take me years to fully understand His greater purpose for living in that upstairs apartment. For today, I was shlepping boxes into the dumpster and although I didn’t like this new reality, I knew to focus on the bigger picture: I was safe, warm, and dry. I focused on what God did give me rather than what was lost.