I don’t know if anyone else does this, but as I drive to stores and appointments, I casually look around at houses, cars, people, and scenery, and wonder what’s behind the doors, windows, or shrubbery. I see a house and think it’s pretty or neat looking on the outside but wonder what it’s like on the inside. It doesn’t mean I want to live there, but that I’m just admiring it from the outside. The maroon car on the trailer in the above picture sat unused in a neighbor’s yard for months if not longer. I often wondered why it was never driven or even moved from its spot in the grass. It looked fine on the outside. Finally one day as I was looking out the window to see if it was snowing yet, I saw it being loaded onto the back of a truck and taken away. Perhaps it was useless to the owner because it required too many expensive repairs??? I’ll never know. But I was curious that it sat so long before being removed.
When I pass properties that look like a junkyard, I can’t help but wonder why the owners don’t remove it. It is an eyesore to all who travel that way and I’m sure especially to neighbors. Then one day I got to thinking… I’m sure there are things in my life that are an eyesore to others…things that are not useful and just take up time or space in my life. I’m pretty good about keeping a neat, clutter-free home because I came from a home that was just the opposite and told myself that in my own home I would never allow things to accumulate on the dining room table, would never have piles of laundry lying about, nor dirty dishes all over the counter. But what about my life?
My eyes drift to a stack of journals that I’ve kept over the years since I retired. At first it was a fun thing and a good exercise of discipline to sit down and write about my day. However, when I go back and read those journals now I see how redundant my entries were and are, and how minuscule. Part of that is because my life is just like that—the same every day for the most part, little diversion or entertainment. If a friend or relative calls me that day, that’s something to write about! You get the picture. Maybe your life is like that, too. So then I wonder if it’s even worthwhile writing in journals. I mean, who will want to read them when I’m gone?! Of course, maybe that’s a good thing because sometimes I write a lot, letting off steam and frustration in my journals and nobody needs to read that.
I don’t only write mundane things in my journal. I like to record the good things that happen so that when I look back on my journals, I will see the blessings of God. Last year I began including a line at the end of each day’s entry that starts “Today God…” I continue that this year. Some days I have to really think hard how to finish that sentence, but other days I know right away what I’m going to write. But that’s the idea. Some days it’s obvious what God is doing in my life, but other days it’s not. However, that doesn’t mean God wasn’t doing something in my life that day; it just means I have to think a little harder to see what He was doing. Sometimes even in those statements I find myself repeating but maybe it’s because God isn’t done with that day’s work yet.
So even if someone only reads the “Today God….” statement in my journals, they are worth writing and my journals are not useless like that car in the picture. I’d like to think that those statements will get them thinking about what God is doing in their lives. That’s the point! What is God doing in your life today? Don’t miss it by hurrying on to the next thing on your agenda or telling yourself you you are useless.
“It is useless, useless, said the Philosopher. Life is useless, all useless. You spend your life working, laboring, and what do you have to show for it? Generations come and generations go, but the world stays just the same.”
Ecclesiastes 1:2-4, GNT
The writer of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon, started out by saying life is useless. Don’t we all feel that way at times? You work so hard to provide for your family, and some days it feels like you’re just spinning your wheels and getting nowhere. If you keep on reading Ecclesiastes, in chapter 3, verse 1 he says, “Everything that happens in this world happens at the time God chooses.”
In the end, nothing is as useless as it seems to us now. God has a purpose for everything, every incident, every life, every event—both good and bad. So how will you finish this statement today: