GOOD THING I SAID WHAT I MEANT

If you’ve been visiting here for a week or so, you’ll know I’m in the throes of a big home improvement project.     Carpeting is coming and everything in my house has to be moved.  Everything.

Some things will not be replaced,  such as old, old, embarrassingly awful useless furniture pieces that are too heavy and ugly for continued existence.      Did I say that clearly enough?   I had a big clunky end table type thing that did not even have value as a  garage sale item.   I mentioned to Son, who was here today,  that this old table is good for nothing;  it ought to be chopped to pieces.

And then Son disappeared.

‘A couple minutes later, it seemed,  I found him on my driveway  — with  what was left of that big old ugly heavy end table.

Good thing  I said what I meant.

You see,  I wasn’t quite aware that I meant what I had said.  I’ve had to make too many decisions this week:  what to save, what to throw away,  where to put this or that, how to make more room to put the contents of five rooms that will be carpeted…. too many decisions!   And that old table?

“Yeah,  probably…. should be…. you know … we should … probably … just …. chop it up.”

And before my tired decision-making brain knew it had made a decision —  there were the pieces filling the back of Son’s GTO,  ready to go to a waiting fire pit.

Because –  “Words mean things.”      “Words have consequences.”

Oh, these were good consequences,  and I really did say what I meant — “chop up that table!” —

I’ve been writing this week about the Bears and the Bees.   The Bears really do exist,  whether they are just lurking, developing problems, whether they are dangers,   whether they are just little issues.   Such things really do objectively exist, and we’d better be careful how we are talking about objective reality,  because clever talk,  loud talk,  ideological talk,  agenda driven talk,  sophistry, and deceitful conversation will not take care of the “bear.”

And at the end of my post on the Bees,  the ground bees I’m dealing with,  I said that we have to admit that not everything is going to work out okay for us.  We have to “push back and keep the world safe for us —   ”

There goes the table top.

I had been thinking about that table, fondly;  it was a great place to put house plants on and not worry about spilling water;  it was a great place to store oversized books;  it was a great place to spread out stacks of music by my piano.

But the truth is,  what I really meant,  is that:  it was an  “old, old, embarrassingly awful useless  piece of  furniture.”

Everyday things of life should help us think about the bigger things of life.    If we live with integrity and truth,  then our local situation will aid our thinking about national and global issues.    

 

Shootings?   Beheadings?   Women and children buried alive or cut in half?  Ebola spreading out of control in Africa?  Celebrity race baiters agitating the mobs?   Government policy  creating ruinous economic conditions?   Medical care now increasingly unaffordable or unavailable?   Global persecution of Christians?   Slavery flourishing around the world?     High school (and college)  graduates who cannot read, understand, or analyze the written word?   102,000,000 adults in this country not working,  producing, or contributing anything yet receiving a living “wage” anyway?    Direct, deliberate, blatant threats from the Islamic world to the Western world?   (Sorry, Nero.  They are not “junior varsity.”)  An entire civilization disintegrating into gross immorality, at great financial and social cost,  enfeebling us all?      A growing spirit of Lawlesssness?   Indifference,  defiance, or contempt directed at our own Creator?

Let’s identify the bears around us.   Let’s face the ground bees.     Pick your issue.    If you see an” old, old, embarrassingly awful useless piece of furniture,”    lay aside sentimentality and fond familiarity — and say what you mean!

I think I must have today.

 

 

Explore posts in the same categories: 2012 America, 2013 Conflicts, Bears as Metaphor, Current Events, Domestic Chores

Tags: discernment, Duty, Lessons Learned, Modern Issues

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