I have blogged recently concerning my mission trip I took with my students to the Boston-ish area... Due to some changes in sponsors - we had to come up with an alternate mode of transportation for our luggage... Why you may ask... Well - it's very challenging for 32 people to go through lines, check luggage, get through security, find your gate, get on the plane, find your luggage at the next destination, and move on... So in the past we have been blessed enough to have a sponsor that was willing to drive our luggage out to the east coast in a van with a box trailer attached to it... Not a glamorous job, but a job much appreciated by us... That didn't work out this year - so one of our other sponsors had the great idea of 'shipping' our luggage - freight style... So that's what we did... We put it on skids - put plywood all around it - and shipped it... It was at the school waiting for us when we got there... It was fantastic!!! We didn't have to mess with it at the airport... We didn't have to shove it in to our rental vans... What a God-send...
The trip home, however, is a different story... As we finished up our week of building roofs, painting, and repairing bulkheads - we loaded up our shipping crates full of dirty clothes, smelly socks, and wet towels... They were sealed tight and ready to ship out the following Monday... We were expecting them to arrive by that Wednesday... But guess what - That didn't happen... We kept waiting - and waiting - and waiting... No word... Finally we hear on Friday where our luggage has turned up - Salt Lake City... Yep - That's right - Utah!!! How did that happen.?! I don't know... I guess our luggage wasn't through traveling, yet... It went East - it needed to go West before coming home...
The good news is - it's back home... A week and a half late, but home... Now - I mentioned earlier about what was in the crates, right..? After a week - boxed up - in a hot truck - what do you think those bags smelled like..? Yeah - exactly... They had been pinned up for so long with all of those unwashed, disgusting clothes inside, that it was pretty obvious that some of these items would get 'tossed'... Goodbye shoes!
Isn't it a good thing that God doesn't do that to us, though... He looks at those of us that keep the 'dirty laundry' all sealed up inside of us for way too long - and He says, "you are beautiful"... He doesn't discard us because we took an extra long time to make our way back to Him - He welcomes us with open arms and He has all sorts of tools to clean us up - no matter how bad we look (or smell)... I'm always amazed by the 'Lost Son' parable that Jesus told... That son of his that turned from him, took his inheritance, puked it away with lavish living, was so far gone that pigs were living better than he was... He finally went back to his father after a long detour and his father ran to him and hugged him... He didn't turn him away and say, "take a bath first"... He hugged him... God doesn't look at us as dirty laundry... He sees us as priceless possessions that He treasures more than anything in the world...
Can Tide or ALL get the stain out? Maybe... Can Jesus get rid of our stains? Fo' Sho'!
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