jstefan posted on October 20, 2010 17:35
My mother Ruth would have been classified as suffering from OCD-obsessive compulsive disorder. From her early days as a farm girl, daughter of a share-cropper on depleted Georgia farm-land, my mother vividly recalled when she and her twin sister Ruby were sowing seed for their father, John Davis, along the freshly plowed furrow. John was up ahead whistling and pulling at the reins as the mule Sally pulled the plowshare. John looked over his shoulder and decided that his girls had wasted precious seed, dumping too much in the furrow. He stopped Sally, jerked his buggy whip out of its holder, ran back and lashed them with the whip exclaiming, “You will never waste another seed again!”
From that point on my mother saved everything. A few weeks ago we were to sell our old home place in Decatur, Georgia. It took six thirty-cubic-yard trash containers, to clean out the 24’x40’ house! A lot of saved “precious” stuff!
What “precious stuff” are we holding onto because of dysfunctional reactions to events in our past?
*It could be an adult figure who exposed us to sexual exploitation, consigning us to a life of promiscuity and perversion and an immodest lifestyle.
*It could be violent verbal outbursts, beatings, and spousal abuse generating broken homes, co-dependency or a need for safe shelters.
*It could be the “precious stuff” of controlling persons who always surrounds themselves with “yes” people under the guise of being a “leader.”
*It could be an individual taught of an angry, unforgiving, unpredictable God that you must obey or He will burn you in the fires of hell for as long as you deserve.
*It could be the “precious stuff” of food used as a reward for good behavior-- not measuring up; one suffers from obesity and all its related health issues.
*It could be the distortion of “precious stuff” scrupulously obeying the rules of the secular business world but somehow in the church promoting an attitude of “no rules”, we can dress, eat, entertain, or relate to people in so called “Christ-freed” ways, daring any of the “saints” to differ under the guilt trip of “you’re judging me!”
All this “precious stuff” reveals is a broken beaten body in a Georgia cotton field. Jesus invites us in our brokenness: “I have bought you with a price, so glorify Christ within and without your body temple.”