One More Thing with Pastor Tim Burchill 2024-11-04

What’s Saved Is Often Lost         

          Here’s the benediction we didn’t have time for yesterday (Sunday, November 3).  It’s one of my favorite quotations (portions of a newspaper column).  I hope you find it as inspiring as I have. And just realize, just because I’m sharing it here doesn’t mean you won’t hear it again sometime soon.  

         Shortly before she died, humorist Erma Bombeck wrote a column entitled, “What’s Saved is Often Lost.” This is just a piece of what she wrote:

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         “I don’t save anything. My pockets are empty at the end of a week. So is my gas tank. So is my file of ideas. I trot out the best I’ve got, and come the next week, I bargain, whimper, make promises, cower and throw myself on the mercy of the Almighty for just three more columns in exchange for cleaning my oven.

         “I didn’t get to this point overnight. I came from a family of savers who were sired by poverty and ... worshiped at the altar of self-denial.

         “Throughout the years, I’ve seen a fair number of my family who have died leaving candles that have never been lit, appliances that never got out of the box.”

         “I myself grew up with a grandmother who made it through the depression, she believed, because she saved . . . everything. I remember thinking fondly of her and laughing out loud when I saw a New Yorker cartoon a few years ago: somebody had gone up into the attic and opened a box and on it was labeled: “pieces of string too short to save.”

         Bombeck continued: “It gets to be a habit.  I have learned that silver tarnishes when it isn’t used, perfume turns to alcohol, candles melt in the attic over the summer, and ideas that are saved for a dry week often become dated.

         “I always had a dream that when I am asked to give an accounting of my life to a higher court, it will be like this: ‘So, empty your pockets. What is left of your life? Any dreams that were unfilled? Any unused talent that we gave you when you were born that you still have left? Any unsaid compliments or bits of love that you haven’t spread around?’

         “And, I will answer, ‘I’ve nothing to return. I spent everything you gave me. I’m as naked as the day I was born.’”

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         Saints are sinners who know what goes back into the box and what continues on after their life here is over.  Bombeck is saying, that all the things that need to be given should be shared while we still have the chance.  Putting off things—even gifts—never works out the way we think it should.

         So go now with the blessings of God—and may you give away anything and everything that might otherwise end up back in the box.  Go and live as a beloved saint of our most Generous God.  Now and always, Amen.

–Tim