Coats

How many memories or keepsakes of negative events do you keep?

In 1945 the German machine was imploding.  Camps occupied by the Nazis were being liberated.  Then along came Auschwitz.  Auschwitz was a horrible site to behold.  The good part was that there were 2,189 people freed from there.  The horrendous finding was that there were 836,255 women’s coats found.  Over 6 tons of human hair were baled and put into warehouses.  Can you imagine a bale of hair?

These were not just coats and bales of hair.  These were stories and memories of people.  People that were part of a murderous plan by an evil man.  Why did the Nazis hold on to these possessions?  Were they trophies?  I would imagine they were not but more to be used by other people.  Not the hair, that is a mystery, but the coats.  They would literally give someone a coat from a person that they had killed, therefore, passing along a terrible memory to another person.  That is hard to fathom.

The Bible speaks of these types of memories.  It speaks of these mental keepsakes we keep in our cranium.

2 Corinthians 5:17-18  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:  The old has gone, and the new is here!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

I just spoke to a lady a couple of weeks that was really going through a hard time.  She spoke of a problem she was having at work with her boss.  I asked her what happened to make her have these problems.  She said that her boss had made some comments to her that were less than positive and every day this created a hostile work environment.  I asked her how long ago these comments were made and she told me that it was 2011.  Wait, 7 years ago?  I asked her if she thought that was taking up too much mental real estate.  She agreed that it sounded way worse once she spoke about it.  7 years!

I believe that is a case of needing to let things go.  How many coats do you have in your closet?  How many negative memories or keepsakes are you allowing to take up mental real estate?  Let them go… and by all means don’t pass them on to someone else.

A man was walking along a mountain ledge when the earth under him gave way.  As he fell he grabbed onto a root that was sticking out of the mountain side.  He began to yell for help, “Help, help help!”  he waited….”Help, help, help!”

Finally there was a voice, “hello”.

The man was so relieved that someone answered.  “Yes, please help me, I’ve fallen off the edge!”

Suddenly there was a reply from above, “Let Go!”

The poor man, hanging from the root thought about it for a minute and said, “Who are you?”

“God” said the voice.

“Oh God, please help me get out of this mess, please!”

There was a long pause and then the voice said “Let Go.”

The man thought about it for a minute, his arm was really beginning to hurt now, so he said, “Is anybody else up there?”

tmg