Episode 3                                  Skimming…

Some of my earliest childhood memories come from life on the farm.  All of the good ones that stuck to the walls of my heart, were the ones with my mother, and often in the garden or within the kitchen.  One particular memory arose this morning, as I lay in the darkness just before dawn, leaving me a tad perplexed, as to its purpose.  I’m still not fully certain I’ve grasped all of its meaning, but we shall roll forward anyway, as I tend to do with things God asks of me… sometimes we never see a thing til long afterward, and sometimes never!  I try not to ask God about his purpose too much, mostly because I wish to focus on being obedient in a task, regardless of whether or not further details might be forthcoming.  So with this in mind, I will simply tell you about the memory, and we can go from there.

One of my responsibilities, as the tiny little thing that I was, involved taking a large measuring cup and scooping all of the rich cream from off the top of the milk jar for my mother, each morning.  We kept the fresh milk inside a large glass jar, with a piece of foil for the lid, held in place with a rubber band.  Once the cream settled at the top, my mother would then pull the jar out of the refrigerator, set it on the counter, and stand me upon a stool beside it.  My mother busied herself at the sink, while I slowly and meticulously scooped the creamy liquid into a separate container.  I knew it would soon be transformed into sweet butter and other yummy things, making my mouth water, along with setting my tummy to growling.    

That was it… just a brief vision of skimming cream off the top of a mason jar of milk in my mamma’s kitchen, some 50 odd years ago.  Strange, isn’t it, how the mind works?

At first, I didn’t even understand what the memory had to do with anything at that moment, as I was lying there in the dark pondering what I should write for today’s episode on Matters of The Heart.  Then, in an instant, I was reminded of an article I posted not two days ago, I think.  Remember the other day, I wrote about boxes, and how we often use them to navigate our thoughts, frequently needing to sort them in one form or another?  Well, it dawned on me that if we sort things in our brain, we most probably have those boxes stored somewhere within the corridors of our hearts, which is where I was headed in the first place! 

But, what on earth does skimming have to do with sorting, you might be wondering?  Well, if we sort things that our mind stores within our heart, or even sort things from within our heart to store in our mind, it isn’t such a great leap of thought to consider that we also might have picked up a particular habit of existence… the skimming over of the things we keep stored in our heart, often taking up too much of our closet space. 

This habit starts when we are very young, from birth, in fact!  We learn a thing, and continue on from there, growing, learning and developing into who we are as adults.  Would you agree that none of us fully relive the memory of learning how to suckle from the breast each morning.  We learned it, grew from it, were weaned of it, and now just skim the surface of its relevance in our existence.

Skimming, as with anything else, is neither good nor evil, in and of itself.  Often, we use this skill to review a thing, or glean a piece of information needed for a particular task, without having to go through it in detail… it’s a time saver! 

The problem occurs when one attempts to skim over a thing they’ve never before read, or even make the assumption that they only need to see a portion, as they’re sure they remember the rest.  In terms of the corridors of the heart, all those boxes we keep stored and tucked away in our closets, begin to break down from a lack of sorting, organizing, and cleaning.  From there, many of the things missed during the skimming process, now begin to spill out into our corridors.  I don’t know about any of you, but God walks those corridors beside me always, so even if I don’t want to take notice of that which I am now tripping over as we walk… He does!

While we might fear God kicking our boxes around,  demanding that we clean up our dirty bits that have fallen out of their hidey holes, this couldn’t be further from the truth.  As a child that has been covered by the blood of the risen son of God, my creator only sees that which his son died to pay for!  While God sees all of what is within my heart, He only focuses on what has been washed white as the purest snow… that’s me, right here, right now.  Before you start thinking that this means we can leave our hearts corridors a cluttered mess, my hope is that we might want to stop skimming over things that are of eternal importance, and clean up our corridors as that of a bride preparing herself for the Groom. 

While it might be acceptable to put all of our unmentionables and dirty bits away from the guests we’ve just invited into our home for Sunday dinner, as I’m sure their observant eyes will be skimming … it’s not healthy, in the least, to do this with God.  The only thing one might accomplish by this bad habit, is never having a clean enough corridor for God to fill with the gifts He wants to place there!

What does this mean for me, personally?  I am learning to fully read the scriptures before me, taking the time to search for what God has tucked within its pages, instead of skimming over what I assume isn’t needed.  I’m using my new efforts of NOT skimming, by more carefully sorting through my boxes and discarding that which God no longer recognizes.  He sees all that is in my heart, and He stays anyway!  So, I wish to make the rooms and corridors of my heart as inviting as possible for He who dwells there…

Until next time, Hugs