Friday evening the Dell Guy arrived at our house to (try to) repair Tom's new laptop computer. 

He was here at dinner time so while he and Tom leaned over the computer and chatted, I brought in two plates of fried potatoes and eggs, peas on the side (our cupboards being oh-so-bare and a grocery trip looming fast). Dell Guy, a man about our age (oldish...heh) left the peas, telling us later that he never eats vegetables because his dad forced him to sit at the table until nine o'clock most nights until he ate them.

Oh dear. (On many different levels).

Mr. Dell Guy also told us about another home he'd visited that day. Before he arrived, the woman asked him by phone the exact time he'd be there, and when he said it was impossible to say precisely when, the woman replied, "I need to know when to clear a path on the floor to my dining room so you can reach my computer."

Oh dear, again.

After he arrived at the woman's home, Mr. Dell Guy stepped through the winding path and sat down at the computer, then a flash of something white zipped over his feet. He mentioned it to the woman and she said, "Oh! That must have been my missing ferret. I have four of them and I could only find three." Mr. Dell Guy had wondered what that suffocating smell was. He told us he's visited a few homes like that lately.

Oh dear, yet again.

I feel so bad for people who could easily qualify for an episode of Clean House, Clean Sweep or Hoarders. Sometimes I've thought perhaps my fantasy job would be to help people declutter their homes.

I do realize junk-filled houses get that way because of myriad reasons. Yet there's one reason which--I feel, anyway--outshines them all. 

Namely, it's that gaping hole in peoples' hearts which was designed to only be filled with the passionate love of Jesus. Only that awesome love will, finally, seal that vacuum. Not possessions and shopping, nor money, food, sex, fame, friends, marriage, dreams fulfilled, good deeds, travel, church activities, education. Those things are ok in the right perspective, yet still, they are but crumbs in comparison to Great Love.

Only that vast and endless, unconditional, passionate love of Jesus will fill the holes in our hearts, holes which He created in the first place.

*********

Jeremiah 31:3
The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness."

*******

We love others best when that love is spillover from the love we have first received for ourselves.


*****