Thursday, July 8, 2010

Do You Have an Abyss?


For anyone that knows me, they know that I normally have a huge purse slung over one arm, normally lovingly referred to as "The Abyss." It's a legend in it's own right. As the years have went on, they grow bigger and deeper, seeming to eat everything I put inside them - calculators, pencils, novels for English, my precalc book, even Tupperware containers full of snacks to get me past 11:00 B lunch. The thing just takes everything.
Last night, I couldn't find my phone on the way home from Scott's house. It took 20 minutes of the 30 minute drive home, so I figured I'd better clean it out. When I got home, I dumped the sucker out on my bed and just stared.
I had a lot of junk in there that I hadn't known about.
A whole bag of cough drops (which are actually Scott's and I'm still trying to find out how he got them in there.), his senior pictures, my camera, my iPod, 3 things of lotion, 2 deodorants, Warm Vanilla Sugar spray (as well as lotion and anti-bacterial hand cream, so I basically had half the line in there), my rainbow polka dot/striped bikini, 4 graduation party announcements (for June), 3 lanyards made from campers in 5th and 6th grade camp at Whitehall from a few weeks ago, and so much other stuff. It was ridiculous that I hadn't even felt that much weight as I lugged it around.
As I sorted through it, I realized how true this was for our own lives. As people, we lug a lot of stuff around, and I don't mean our purses and murses. (It's not a murse! It's a satchel! Indiana Jones has one! Sorry.) I mean the emotional things that we have and feel, as well as the mistakes we remember and carry with us. We don't really understand the amount that we have, until we just can't take it anymore.
Break-ups. Rejections. Fights. Bad grades. Losing a job. Accidents. Deaths. Injuries. Divorces. Depression. Anxiety. Suicide. Murder. Abandonment. It all adds up, whether we realize it or not. The pain just keeps coming, and if we don't do anything to get rid of it, it just adds up more and more. Soon, we can't handle it. We start "going through" everything that we're feeling and it just makes it all worse. It seems like we can't do anything to get rid of it.
But we can.
When you accept Jesus Christ for everything He is, you can finally see one of the biggest and most amazing truths known to man: He LOVES us. Every part of us, no matter what. So when we're cluttered up with all our junk? He can make it go away. When we ask Him to forgive us of all our sins, He forgets them. Poof. Gone. He doesn't know what you're talking about. It's easy.
That part, at least. You have to make a committment to follow through. Don't do those things anymore. When Jesus erases them from His memory, you have to erase them from your life. Messed up? No problem, just don't do it again. It gets easier the longer you stick with it. And just like that, your mess is cleaned up. Jesus turned into a Merry Maid and got the job done, and you're walking just fine, with nothing holding you down.
Your abyss is now clean.
So here's the next No Restraints challenge. Are you hurting and loaded down with your own abyss full of garbage? There's help, and hope. Turn your hurts over to Jesus, and ask Him for the forgiveness only He can provide. It'll be amazing once He steps in and the feeling that you'll get is unlike any other. He's there, waiting for you to ask. It's up to you.
Are you in?
-Kimber.

No comments:

Post a Comment