Wow. There’s nothing like an estate sale to make you think.
I just got back from one in our neighborhood. I didn’t know the folks who had lived there, but I had met the wife once many years ago. I remember that she was younger than me, attractive and friendly.
As I walked through the house, I saw that clearly no one was living there any longer, yet there was evidence of lives lived and work done well. I couldn’t get the questions out of my mind! Clearly, one of the adults was a graphic designer, based on the inventory of books, software and Pantone fandecks in one room. There were LOTS of mens’ suits… 30 or 40 or 50. They looked expensive and were in pristine condition. There were two very, very nice western saddles (random!) that looked like they’d never been used. Most everything else was just junk… dirty and broken and outdated. There was a cast iron skillet like one I have. It still had grease puddled on one side. It must have been the last thing the former residents cooked in before they left. Nobody even bothered to clean it.
Books give clues about people. There was a variety of books, including some Bibles and books by Christian authors about Christian topics. There were some old CDs with worship music on them. It seems that there is a believer in the family. Good. Hopefully all members of this family are.
Very little was still left in the bedrooms. There was no sign of young children except the purple walls in one bedroom.
Everything in the basement was filthy. A layer of dirt covered almost everything. The lawnmower still had little dried grass clippings as if it had just been used a couple of weeks ago. But that wasn’t the worst filth. There was a very large box of pornographic magazines. Well, that’s different from the Christian books upstairs. My heart broke with every step.
In one corner of the basement, the dad’s home office sat as if someone had just left for the day… except for that coat of dirt on everything. There was an erasable white board on the unfinished wall. Among all of the work notes on the board, two short notes to him were scribbled in the bottom corner. They both were addressed to “Dad” and said how much they missed him. One said that the author/child would continue the dad’s work to re-establish Eden on earth. (I get this.) This stuff set me on an emotional roller coaster!
I wanted to know the story of this house and this family so badly, so I asked. The folks running the sale said that the husband had died (I had figured this much out) and that wife and their kids lost the house in foreclosure. The family had taken all they wanted and left the rest. It was tragic. The new owner hired the estate sale folks to sell as much as they could. There was A LOT of stuff, but—honestly—not much that would be worth anything to anyone else. There will be quite a lot for the new owner to dispose of and clean and replace after the sale closes at 4:30 today.
So my takeaway thoughts:
1. Someone in my neighborhood died and I never heard about it. It’s a big neighborhood, but this house wasn’t all that far from ours.
2. A family lost their home and I never heard about it.
3. Two children miss their dad. Presumably a woman misses her husband.
4. Did they really live like this? It’s not like an episode of Hoarders… it wasn’t TONS of stuff, but what WAS there was clearly uncared for. The carpets and the walls and the ceilings were stained far worse than any blemishes we have here (which are plenty!). The little bit of furniture that was still there was all broken. Those men’s suits, a pair of his cowboy boots and those two saddles were pristine, but nothing else in the house was. You just never know, do you?
5. STUFF! Time and money and space devoted to STUFF that is, as of today, totally worthless. AND WE’RE ALL GUILTY!!!!!!!!! At least maybe the wife and children got a clean start (figuratively AND literally) at the end of all this tragedy.
6. I LOVE STUFF! I’ve got to get rid of stuff. (These thoughts aren’t new for me, but they are amplified today.)
7. Bibles, worship CDs, stains and porn all in the same house. I’ll bet there’s far more of that combination in the world than any of us would like to think. People, EVERYTHING WE DO—EVEN OUR BEST WORK DONE WITH OUR BEST EFFORT AND OUR BEST INTENTIONS—is affected by sin. NOTHING on this earth is what God designed it to be any more. We ALL need a Savior to clean our hearts and a Redeemer to restore this creation!
Thanks for reading. Consider your priorities today. Consider your stuff. CONSIDER JESUS. He’s in the business of making hearts new and starts clean.
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