The Catalog

You will not stroll into Christlikeness with your hands in your pockets, shoving the door open with a careless shoulder. This is no hobby for one's leisure moments, taken up at intervals when we have nothing much to do, and put down and forgotten when our life grows full and interesting... It takes all one's strength, and all one's heart, and all one's mind, and all one's soul, given freely and recklessly and without restraint. A.J. Gossip

Do you remember years ago, before internet, when the only way you could shop was through a store catalog? Sears was one of the stores that had a huge catalog that also doubled as a booster seat when your kids were small.  You would sit them on the catalog so they could reach the dinner table.  Parents were geniuses back then. 

You would open this catalog and they carried everything.  You couldn’t go online and order what you wanted, you would browse the catalog and find what you wanted and then you would drive to the nearest store to order what you wanted and then wait for it to come in. 

Our brains are very much like a large catalog.  There are various departments where you can quickly sort through the folders to find what you need at any given moment.  If you think about it in terms of a computer’s size your brain is not limited to 16MB.  Your brain has unlimited capacity to hold stuff.  The stuff you put in your filing cabinet is critical.  If you put junk in there, what comes out will be junk.  It is not all of a sudden going to turn into quality merchandise.

Many years ago I took a continuing education class that was supposed to teach you how to keep your desk clean.  They recommended that you only touch any piece of paper on your desk once before doing something with it.  You had various options to use each time you picked up a piece of paper on your desk.  You had to do something with the paper.  It went into a read folder, an action folder or a trash folder. 

This same thing applies with how we fill our mental filing cabinet or catalog.  If we want to retrieve the best from our mental catalog, we have to first put in good information.  There are also going to be things that we need to take action on and there is a whole boatload of stuff that we need to put in the trash folder.  Our trash folder is where we are to put hatred, anger, profanity and jealousy to name a few.  These need to be replaced by love, compassion, long suffering, forgiveness etc… 

Fill your mental catalog with the good stuff and good stuff will come out.  Fill it with the wrong stuff and your trash will be overflowing.

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, I have often filled my catalog with the wrong or harmful information.  What I put in it can make the difference in showing other’s You, or leading them further from You.  Help me to put the good stuff in so that what comes out is worthy of You.

Scripture: The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel: To know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding, to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, judgment, and equity; to give prudence to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion—A wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel, to understand a proverb and an enigma, the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.  Proverbs 1:1-7