Moving Day

"So what do you think about all this, Pebbles?" my husband asked fondly, patting the grandchildren's pet as the small dog scurried around in excitement.  Our son's family was moving! Cartons were being loaded and furniture maneuvered through halls and stairway by the men of the family.  We were there trying to help out wherever we could.

"She says she travels light," I joked in response to Howard's remark at the terrier's comical antics. A bedraggled soft toy was flung across the floor and Pebbles hastily retrieved her teddy bear, giving it a shake before distractedly tossing it aside.  I don't know if she was upset by the confusion, or just enjoying the activity.  I know the grassy fields of the new place intrigued her to no end.

The kids were moving to the farm, downsizing to a new mobile home in their preparations to build a house in the country. What a lot of work moving entails!  Drawers were emptied and papers sorted and/or discarded. What to save and what to keep?  I spied a storage shelving unit crammed full of boxed games.  My daughter-in-law said she was letting the kids choose a few to keep and then her older daughter and roommate could have their pick.

We are on schedule to help with clean-up at the old place, readying it for showing by the realtor. Not all the furniture is to be moved, at least for now, in order to "stage" the house for potential buyers.  I think a garage sale is looming in view of all the extra accumulation of possessions that invariably surfaces during a move.

Howard's and my favorite hobby is to go to estate sales and pick and plunder through the remnants and discards left by a lifetime of living when someone dies or gives up their home. We always manage to find some trinket or treasure, for "one man's trash is another man's treasure."  Even bringing one thing home, though, gives me pause for accumulating so much ourselves that will have to be disposed of someday.

Jesus traveled light.  He said in Matthew 8:20, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head."  When our soul departs, the empty shell that is the body is like an empty house.  It can be "staged" and made pretty for the funeral service, but nobody lives there.  The real life is to be carried on somewhere else, in the elysian fields of heaven, if Jesus is trusted as Savior. Good reason to travel light!