The Baggage Keeper

I have been away from home for over two weeks and the last five nights I have slept in five different beds in four different states and spent hours in three different airports!  Exhausting?  For Sure!  Exhilarating?  Absolutely!  I am so thankful the Lord allowed me to spend time with my dad in California, speak to precious women in Arizona, come home to see my amazing husband for one night before being called early the next morning to come for the birth of our son’s son!!

As I sit in our son’s house in Hendersonville, taking care of their 14 month old daughter while mom and dad and baby brother are at the hospital, (she is sleeping now or there would be NO way I could do this now!!) I am reflecting on the things God has taught me these past couple of weeks while I was away from home.

For one thing….sitting at the airports in San Diego and Tucson and Indianapolis I people watched.  Oh, how I love to people watch!!  I noticed that people were pulling something, carrying something, pushing something, lugging “stuff”.  Some of them were so weighed down with bags and backpacks and purses and luggage that I could see the huge effort it was for them to hurriedly get to their gate to catch their flight to their next destination!  Weighed down.  Exhausted.  Carrying so much baggage!!

Can you picture it in your mind?  Can you see yourself on a trip carrying around all of the “stuff” you need….or think you need.  Can you feel the pull on your shoulder?  Can you imagine yourself as you adjust the straps or try to keep the carryon suitcase wheels from tipping? 

It occurred to me as I watched….and even as I, myself, was loaded down with my computer bag full of “stuff”….that this is how we go through life!!  Loaded down with cares, burdens, “stuff”.  These burdens/loads can be physical, emotional, spiritual, or mental.  We carry them around and become weighed down like 2 Timothy 3:6 talks about….and if we don’t “lay them aside” like Hebrews 12 tells us to do, we will not be able to “run the race with endurance” because we are so loaded down.

Would you take a minute or two and reflect on if you are carrying around some burdens that God never intended for you to carry?  Worry?  Fear?  Vain imaginations?  Guilt?  What?

Honestly, I actually only saw a couple of people who had no baggage!! No backpacks or suitcases.  Nothing!  Oh, how freely they walked!  Not weighed down!!  Hands free!!  Oh, Lord…would You please strip us of anything that would keep our hands from serving You and loving people?!!  In Jesus’ name….amen!

“David left his baggage in the care of the baggage keeper” before he went to fight the powerful enemy Goliath!!  (1 Samuel 17:22) Let’s leave our baggage with our baggage keeper too!!