Clear a Shelf for What’s Coming

Every September my dad packs Hungry Man meals in the camper of his best friend, loads up four wheelers, and fills his quiver with arrows. Hunting season has arrived.

That means when we returned home from our Christmas visit in December we unpacked luggage, presents, and a cooler full of elk meat.

(Here I pause to inform you that one of my childhood memories in Wyoming was walking around the frozen elk hanging upside down in the garage, awaiting butchering –tongue bloody and frozen to the garage floor. Nice.)

Of course, I have not quite left adolescence, as dad tells me before Christmas to thaw my big freezer and make room for the elk.

Oh yeah, of course I will.

I didn’t.

So on December 28 I have these frost-covered freezer shelves that are a mess, with remnants of things like garden carrots we all know I’m never going to cook in a healthy recipe when Panda Express gives theirs to you all ready to eat.

And this cooler filled to the lid with packages of elk burger.

I stand and lecture my inner teenager, You should have listened to your father and made room for these BEFORE you brought them home.

This is me inhaling and blowing a long breath out that makes my lips flap with self-disgust.

All that to say, in keeping with the hunting theme, we are looking down the barrel of 2014. God has pre-filled our calendar with good works to do. 

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”  (Ephesians 2:10 NIV)

Have we made a place for those good works?

Are our daily habits shaped in a way that allows room for God to work?

Finances in order so we can give?

Souls humbled and ready for instruction?

We know those good works are coming. Let’s not be caught as lounging 12-year-olds when they arrive.

Listen to your Father.