GARAGE SALES / GARBAGE SALES

 Rummage sales, garage sales, are all the same to me. They are ways of getting rid of garbage, stuff we don't want, junk that is cluttering up our life, our house, our space. We all have garbage in our lives, literally and figuratively. Garage sales are one way to get rid of the garbage and come out with a financial profit – although we never get back what the stuff cost us in the first place – which brings up the question of why what is now so needless was once so necessary. But that may be getting a little too personal.

I once heard someone describe the ministry to the dying as helping them get rid of garbage. Over the years that has been my experience as well. I have ministered to a number of people in the throes of death who were still hanging on. They could not die or would not die. More often than not they would not let go of life until they had said the last "good-by" to the last loved one.

But so many others would not let go of life until they had gotten rid of the garbage they had been carrying around for many, many years. It had loaded them down in life, kept them from living in peace, and now was preventing them from dying in peace. It was only when they dumped the garbage, usually by some sort of final confession, that they could die in peace. The constant and surprising part of it was that the garbage was usually no big deal. But it was to them.

That is why in death it is now nothing more than garbage. It was once a big deal, perhaps a very big deal. It was once important, even very important. Now, in death, it has no value. It is just cluttering up their lives, preventing them from entering into God's fuller life in death.

All garbage was once somehow in some way important and in no way garbage. Now it is not to the person for whom it is now garbage. But, as garage sales remind us, our garbage is now someone else's treasure. That's why garage sales work. True garbage goes to the dump. The rest we recycle.

We all carry around garbage which, while we are carrying it, seems important, even seems like a treasure. But what it is doing is keeping us from one another, from another.

Garbage is something that has lost its value for us. The problem is that sometimes we do not recognize that what we still think is valuable is not. We're still hanging on to it, whatever that "it" is – past slights, prejudices, bigotries, old ways that don't work, traditions that have seen their day, the past.

No one of us is immune. We all carry excess baggage, baggage filled with garbage. Not a nice thought, I know. But it's summer. And we all know what garbage smells like in summer. Maybe it's a good time to look into our lives to recognize the garbage and get rid of it. Take it to the dump. It can't be and shouldn't be recycled. Why wait until we are dying to unload what we should have unloaded years before? Why waste our time and our life carrying around garbage?