bins
One of my goals for the new year has been to organize and eliminate various items that occupy many bins and boxes in my office and our home.
As can be imagined, I have many containers of journals in addition to past calendars and planners.
I haven’t begun the process of making any headway with either of these categories due to a fair amount of dread in tackling the piles.
As I started to think about decluttering, I realized many of my thoughts landed upon people we lost over the last several years. There are always moments of overwhelm when a departed person leaves behind many belongings.
What is important and what is plain ol’ stuff?
This has made me want to be more vigilant in keeping and organizing what is of value and reducing the abundance of random things.
One area I have newly organized pertains to my jewelry.
I am not a big jewelry person.
Most of what I wear is ultra simple and inexpensive.
There were the years of having young children who would love tugging at necklaces and their strength was greater than the chains. I abandoned necklaces and earrings for years.
The pandemic only increased my sense of comfort and sweatpants and jewelry didn’t seem to work with my homebody habitation.
I have been given some beautiful jewelry pieces from family members no longer here.
I want others to be able to identify the original owners and worth.
I ordered two identical jewelry boxes to hold my jewelry. One box would hold my everyday baubles despite not being a part of a daily rhythm.
The other box would contain special and sentimental pieces. I tucked special rings belonging to each of my grandmothers within the soft velveteen slots of the box.
During my father’s travels as a football official, he frequently returned from trips with
special earrings for both mom and me. I used the places designed for earring studs to hold the lapel pins my dad collected and shared broadly. This was a quick and easy solution to categorizing and identifying possessions of the jewelry variety.
I also have a large storage container of received cards. Over the years, I might place a few cards on a shelf and as soon as they became a toppling hazard, I would stow the growing pile in a small box.
Year after year, the volume grew and so did the need for a larger container.
A week ago, I hauled the card bin upstairs to begin the sorting process. The bin remained unopened for many days. One afternoon, I snapped open the lid and read a few cards.
I replaced the lid.
The sampling of cards ranged from an acknowledgment of a special birthday to well wishes and prayers for my health and touching words about being someone’s mom.
.
I love completing a task and placing a checkmark in a box. It would be easy to take the opened bin, pour the contents into the recycling can, and pronounce the job done.
I closed the lid because, for sentimental me, it’s not an easy job. The pile is deep and wide. There are cards bearing handwriting I want to save. I am a word person and there are words I want to treasure and remember.
I will start again by opening the bin, taking a handful of cards to read, and deciding their final destination.
I love receiving and sending mail. As I look at this large bin of sentiments from over many years, I am overwhelmed with gratitude.
We have so many ways to communicate in an instant but taking the time to send words into mailboxes is nearly a forgotten practice. This bin represents love and being cared for well.
What if we looked at the love of God as a bin of love?
A love bin that must be and beckons to be opened.
We can’t keep it tucked away in a basement room with the lid tightly affixed.
We can’t be afraid to hold and possess the fullness of this love because of its boundlessness.
I think this is God’s idea to completely blow us away with the vastness of His love for us.
His love for us has never changed.
It’s our life’s mission to bear witness to examples of His love, the multitude of ways stacks up like a pile of cards in every dimension of our lives.
It’s a bin that is impossible to empty or to fully comprehend how He has loved us since before our time began.
Our assignment is to look at the many ways love has been documented for us.
Open your camera roll, text messages, emails, or maybe your stack of cards.
Do you see the love in each image or word?
Next, look over your life and if this feels too big, reflect over a solitary day and muse about how God has shown and showered you with His love.
You are loved.
I am so grateful for you.
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us,
that we should be called children of God!
And that is what we are!”
I John 3:1
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations,
for ever and ever!
Amen.”
Ephesians 3: 17b-21
