Throw It Out!

Help! I'm addicted to playing a game I can't win! Saving leftovers! I can't bear to throw out perfectly good food, so I place foil over it and save it. Maybe we will eat a little of it, and maybe we won't. I transfer it to a plastic storage container for another day and usually forget about it!

Tonight I made a (almost) clean sweep, taking out the L.O.'s and mercilessly putting them down the garbage disposal. My husband had inspired me when he cleaned out the freezer section of the fridge today. Some of them were leftover leftovers that I had disguised as a new dish. Mashed potatoes had become potato salad. Beans had become chili. But enough's enough! I will start the new year with a clean plate (er, slate).

When our kids were growing up, I never had that problem. There were no leftovers with six hungry youngsters cleaning their plates. It's hard to downsize, when soups and stews keep growing with every added ingredient.

Sometimes I think we hang on to leftovers in other areas of our lives, too. So many people reminisce and dwell on how it used to be, especially about church. They only want to sing the old hymns and live on past spiritual experiences. It's true, revivals were fervent and frequent in our youth but we can't live in the past. God has fresh manna for us every day if we will gather it!

We may hang on to the memory or the loss of past relationships, leftovers of yesteryear that haunt us. Or we remember missed opportunities and nurture thoughts of "If only..." Paul said in Philippians 3:13, "...this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those thing which are before."

Psalm 96:1 admonishes us, "O sing unto the Lord a new song: sing unto the Lord all the earth."

God is a God of new things. His mercies are new every morning. Lamentations 3:22-23, "It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. (23)They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness."

Some of the recollections we have are in reality not so great as we remembered them. Like refrigerator leftovers, they may not even be appetizing if we experienced them again. As the new year begins, it might be well to discard regrets, putting them down the garbage disposal, and looking forward to the new things God has in store for us!