replacement

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An Expiry Date May Be On The Horizon

Things have an expiry date, they stop working or they get phased out. 

an expiry date may be on the horizon

Have you ever taken a good hard look at your closet? I don’t mean just opening it up and grabbing a shirt or a pair of pants. I mean really looking at what all is in there. 

We don’t do this enough and that is why our closets are stuffed full.

When you look in your closet with a desire to really see what is there, you find things you don’t wear any more. 

In my closet I have a section of shirts I wear in the winter and a section of shirts I wear in the summer. But I also have a section of shirts I don’t wear at all.

Never … any more that is.

But those shirts stay in my closet year after year. 

I have some shirts that I still wear that I’ve had for years. But I have some clothes that have gone out of style or they don’t fit me, or they have gone out of style AND don’t fit me. 

I say that because there are a few items in my closet that don’t fit but if I reduced my mass, I would definitely wear them. I keep those clothes because I have hope. It might be fanciful hope, but it is still hope. 

I really could get rid of a third of my shirts on the basis that I don’t wear them and probably will never wear them again.

I don’t think I am different from most people. We could all do a clothing purge.

Shirts and pants are not the only things that don’t last forever. Almost everything we have has a time limit on it – like the two hard drives I need to replace in the next three months.

I have to replace them not because they don’t work. They have been working fine for a number of years. The company that makes these hard drives has just decided to stop supporting them. 

They are giving plenty of time to get a replacement and are emailing me weekly reminders of their expiry date. 

Hey, they are even offering to give me a discount if I purchase a new hard drive that they will continue to support … until they don’t. 

These drives are not just external hard drives you plug into your computer. These drives attach to your network and are accessible remotely. The information I have stored on them I can access from anywhere at any time. 

But I guess it’s the end of the run for these hard drives. I can still store information on them, but now I’ll have to plug them into my computer to access any of it. They will make great paper weights when they are replaced.

I like the idea of the discount and I probably will take advantage of it. 

Wouldn’t it be great if there was such a discount with the old clothes we don’t wear any more?  

There’s the thing: Everything has an expiry date; nothing lasts forever. You and I have an expiry date as well. We, however, are not going to get emails every week warning us of when we will expire. We need to be prepared for that date in advance. Don’t wait too long. Be sure to have a relationship with Christ Jesus so that when your expiry date comes, you go to be with God in heaven.

That’s life!

Paul

Question: What in your life is expiring that you need to do something about? Leave your comments and questions below.

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My Replacement Blog

From time to time I republish a previously published post. This post was written and published in the summer of 2013. I hope you enjoy it. 

It’s not easy writing these blogs, you know. Sure, it’s only 500 to 600 words; some people can speak that many words in a minute or two. But it’s not the actual writing that’s difficult.  

I remember when I was a kid. To write 500 words was a death sentence! It’s only a page of words, but when I was young I didn’t have that much to say. Plus, I’m a male and we can say lots with just a look on our face or a few non-intelligible sounds.

The tough thing about writing is the critiquing of what I write. Today I wrote a killer blog.  I thought it was one of my best, so I was anxious for someone to read it. I kept asking my wife, “Have you read it yet?”

I think my asking got her more intrigued with it, so she finally got on her computer and took a look. Everything was going well for the first 3 paragraphs. And then she stopped.

“You can’t write about that.” she said. I replied, “Keep reading”, thinking that maybe when she digested the whole blog she would have a change of mind. But after every paragraph she would stop and say the same thing.

Now, I don’t mind when she says, “Your grammar was really bad on that one” or “the punctuation needs some work.”  I don’t even mind when she says, “You should rephrase that.”  She has great ideas some times. After all, she does all the editing for my blog site.

The thing that I do mind, the thing that is tough to hear, is the content can’t be published. I spent some quality time writing my blog today and when I was finished I was proud of my work.

But now no one is going to read it. I wish I could publish it, and share it with others, but because it’s about a close family member, I’ve been instructed to keep it in the vault.

I ran into this problem several years ago when my kids became teenagers. I used to use illustrations in my sermons that were about things my kids did, or experienced. When they were young they loved hearing me tell stories about them. 

But for some reason, by the time they hit about 12 or 13, I was finding that I needed to ask for permission if I was going to speak about them in church. Eventually, I thought it best to just leave them out of it. So for many years they have been missing from my sermon content.

Maybe they’re happy about it. Maybe they don’t do or say things that are as “preachable” as they did when they were kids. But one thing is for sure, censorship doesn’t just revolve around the CRTC (Canadian Radio & Television Commission). 

Most of you would have liked my blog. You would have laughed, and been concerned. Some of you, who know my family well, would have had some follow up questions that you really needed answers to. 

But unfortunately, you won’t get a change to read it. So just forget I mentioned my killer blog that I can’t publish. This will have to do as a replacement.

Here’s the thing: Sometimes we want to do things that God doesn’t want us to do. He doesn’t force us, but if we continue, we might cause harm to ourselves or others. We can be stubborn and do it anyway, but the benefits of listening to God’s wisdom may save us a lot of heartache.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How have you benefitted by not doing something you really wanted to do?  Leave your comment below.