timberrrrrrrrrr

Yesterday morning I heard buzzing noises outside my house. I went to the front door and saw that my neighbour across the street was having some trees removed by a man with a chainsaw. My heart leapt! I needed some trees removed as well but hadn't known where to start as I wanted someone who knew what they were doing to fell them. I ran outside in my workout gear and glasses (not at my most attractive, I admit) and asked the friendly neighbour if I could borrow her chainsaw guy for a few minutes. She asked Dean (yes, his name was Dean) and he said sure.

Ten minutes later he had felled my two dead birch trees and never left a mark on my lawn or hardly a footprint in my flowerbeds! Amazing what a little power tool in the hands of an expert can do! Now I shall plant something ALIVE in their place.

I have collected odds and ends of furniture throughout the past few years as people give me stuff and I can't bear to throw out an old chair because I think I might use it somewhere, oh and the cats like to sleep on it, you know. As I was reorganising my basement last week, Dean said to me (the Dean I live with, not the chainsaw Dean) that I should just get rid of stuff I am not using, stuff that does not work. What am I hanging onto it for? He is right. Get rid of the deadwood and make way for the living, growing things.

This reminds of my something my friend Carolle has been talking about recently, about not trying to resurrect or prop up our old nature, our flesh, our broken humanity, but instead, letting it die and grabbing hold of the pure, new life of Jesus which is uncorrupted and unlimited. These two things are vying for the same space, so you have to give up one to make way for the other.

So listen up my old self-willed and self-centred life: timberrrrrrrrrrr

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outWORD by Matte Downey

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