TOSS THE TOTE & DITCH THE DUMPING

 


One of my dear friends recently made a visual representation of his own life in a grid of 7x10 blocks, which depicts a rough rounding of the estimated life expectancy of 70 years in South Africa.  With each birthday, a block is coloured in while the remaining blocks stay blank.  At my friend’s age, and with his birthday around the corner, at least 81% of the blocks on his life grid are coloured in.  Within the exact same constraints, the part of coloured blocks on my own life grid, at 76%, is only marginally “better” than his.  That got me thinking…. What does it even mean?  I have other dear friends who already have at least 114% of their life grids coloured in and my darling daughter-in-love lost her life when only 37% of her life grid was coloured in.


The longer I live, the more I realise that we live in a world which is hellbent on getting us to focus on and fret about things we cannot change and miss opportunities to bring about real change in places where we can.  The Lord grants each one of us the privilege of colouring in blocks on our life grids and only He determines how many we get to colour in.  It pleases Him when we faithfully colour in the blocks on our own life grids, and our own life experiences are like colourful crayons we collect throughout our lives.  We cannot determine how many of the blocks in our life grids will be coloured in, but we most certainly can determine how we colour it and which colours we use to do so with the blocks entrusted to us.


So if it is indeed that simple, why then, do we not just get going and use our colouring crayons to colour our blocks?  I believe that we become distracted when our view of our colouring crayon carry cases is obscured by something far larger and heavier…


Many of us carry around heavy loads of unwanted stuff like labels, misapplied expectations, misinformation, misunderstanding, failure, insecurities, disappointments, denial, etc.  Like unappealing giant invisible totes, we cart these things around with us while it, almost exclusively, do not add any value to our lives.  In fact, it robs us.  Furthermore, we don’t only cart around this dead weight, but we also dump some of it on those around us. 


Consider this for a moment…

Not all diseases are visible.

Not all fatties eat themselves into oblivion.

Not all human body year models correspond to their respective mileage.

Not all smiles reflect happiness.


We cannot use our own survived-cancer-crayon to colour a block on the grid of someone suffering from a relentless autoimmune disease.  We cannot use our own optimal-metabolism-crayon to colour a block on the grid of someone suffering from a yet-undiagnosable metabolic disorder.  We cannot use our own health and happiness crayons to colour blocks on the grids of people who have suffered significantly more crises, tragedies, disasters and rare diseases than we have.  When we attempt to use our own crayons to colour blocks on other people’s grids, it fails to bring colour, it only serves to dump unwanted stuff into their totes.


We do not know what percentage of the blocks on our life grids will be coloured in by the time we check out of this life.  I do, however, have no doubt that we have the responsibility to colour in 100% of every single block the Lord entrusts to us.  Perhaps it is time to toss our totes so that we have a clear view of our crayons, to faithfully colour our own blocks?  And while we’re at it, why don’t we just also ditch the dumping of unwanted stuff into other people’s totes?


So dear reader, how about it, are you with me?



“From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”

Acts 17:26-28 NIV


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