Rummage Sale of the Heart

I decided to have a rummage sale one day, so I went into the attic of my heart to shuffle through so many items I had forgotten: broken dreams and broken promises that I had stored away in pain with hopes of mending them some day; antique habits that I had clung to simply because they had been in my life for a long time; dusty grudges that I had harbored in the dark attic corners of my heart, unwilling to give them up. The broken items were useless unless someone fixed them, but I thought that someone who liked to do that kind of thing might want them. I thought I would also get rid of the old habits if anyone would take them off my hands, but I knew I could easily keep them if they didn't go. The old dusty grudges would be like new if I cleaned them up a bit, but I hoped to get rid of them because I had never really liked them anyway.

I then went to clean out my heart's closets. In one I found forgotten commitments; I had made them long ago with good intentions, and someone might want them now. In another closet I found unused talents that were a little rusty, and I wondered whether they were of any worth. Here and there were unforgiven sins that amounted to quite a number that were cluttering my heart. I knew I needed to get rid of them.

I gathered everything together and organized them on tables in the sunlight of my heart's front yard, and I was amazed to see how ugly many things actually were, while others still had a little sparkle there in the light. I put up my sign down at the road, and soon a man named Jesus came by.

He looked my tables over, examining each item, then He picked up the broken pieces and mended them there before my eyes. He gave me a special solution called Grace that helped me renew my forgotten commitments, and He showed me how those rusty talents could still be used. Then He surprised me by paying a very high price for the things I was most ashamed to have displayed. Instead of carting off His purchases, He helped me bag up and get rid of the ones like my old grudges and habits. And then He left without taking anything with Him. I noticed my pile of sins on the grass. He had paid for them and then forgotten them.

"Hide they face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit withing me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore until me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free Spirit." Psalms 51:9-12