An Estate Sale Lesson

My friend and I stumbled upon an estate sale Saturday

after our excursion to an Art Fair.

The home was old and lovely 

and surely reflected a life of prosperity.

As I wandered through the world 

a man and his wife had lived in,

loved in, entertained in, 

I began to feel like an intruder, a spy, a witness to lives 

that should have remained private.

And, suddenly, I felt a great and overwhelming sadness.

All the things they had bought together,

all the things they had accumulated, 

had been given, and had shared together

for fifty, maybe sixty years or so 

were left behind,

for strangers to look at and poke through.

It unsettled me.

And then, as I stood there, those words found in First Timothy 6:7 

welled up in my heart and shone with great clarity:

"For we brought nothing into this world, 

and it is certain

we can carry nothing out."

The lesson for me remains to be seen,

but I suspect it should serve to temper 

my own accumulation 
of things.

lmw

(Photo taken at the Hilltop last November)