Packrat or Treasures Old & New

First, an update: I called Barbara last night and she says Mary survived Thursday’s brain surgery and appears to be doing well.

———

“Dad, do you have any old Egyptian-looking things; I need some things like that for a library display”?

“Well, I just happen to have a four-foot tall obelisk and a tee shirt with hieroglyphic text on it. I've got a First Century Egyptian oil lamp around here somewhere; I'll have to look in a box for that. How soon do you need this stuff"?

All the time people call me asking for odd things.

In the past couple of months different folks have asked to borrow:

An extension ladder, swimming pool shock, six hand puppets, chairs, folding table, a copy of Dark Night Of The Soul, charcoal grill, car jack, shirt with a pumpkin on the chest, a shovel, an ax, a shrimp net, eight forks, a cat carrier, and twenty “extra” dollars.

They call me for stuff because they know I’m a pack rat.

I keep things.

I hold on to things.

I preserve odd things thinking I’m going to have a use for them someday.

Need a bird nest? A snakeskin? A model of an Assyrian chariot? A bust of Jax London or Homer or Shakespeare or the Emperor Hadrian ? A dog skull? A statue of a naked lady? A World War I artillery shell? A model of the Titanic? A box full of assorted hats? Owl pellets? A mummified rat?

I’ve got it.

I accumulate things.

So it was no surprise when my daughter called wanting “Old Egyptian-looking stuff”. She knew I’d be likely to have something or the other like that on hand.

Ginny says we live in a museum.

I say the place has a certain ambience.

Jesus said, “Every scribe that is instructed unto the kingdom of Heaven is like unto a man that is a householder who bringeth forth out of his treasure things old and new”.

There’s the rub.

I feel that all I’ve been doing recently is dredging up old things, stuff dead as Tut. Rehashed ideas. I’m saying things I’ve said before again and again. Then repeating myself.

Nothing fresh or new or exciting.

My vision of the Lord God, high and lifted up, has faded till I’m relying on memory of visions past.

But memories of inspiring times in the past grow stale in the problems and challenges of the present.

Oh, I see wherein I’m stagnant. Every scribe instructed… brings out treasures.

I get so tied up thinking about what great wisdom I have to offer other people, poor souls, that I neglect being instructed of God for myself.

If a Bible verse means nothing to me, why should I pass it on to somebody else?

The Word is, “John Cowart, Seek Ye First…”