YARD SALES

Keva and I love to go to yard sales and flea markets.  About once a year we travel to Collinsville, Alabama and spend hours walking through the make-shift booths of the Collinsville Flea Market.  Usually on Wednesdays I’ll make a trek through the local Clanton flea market and on Saturdays it has become a tradition for us to do yard sales and then visit the Clanton flea market again. We “think” we find all sorts of treasures. 

But I went to an estate sell this past weekend and it really made me think.  Apparently, the old couple had passed away and the family was selling their belonging.  We drove up to the simple little wood frame home.  The yards were neat and orderly.  As we walked into the modest little home we saw beautiful but humble furnishing. 

We plundered and in one of the back rooms I saw some things that made me think.  There on a table were boxes and boxes of baseball cards.  Now if you know me, you know I am just like a little kid when it comes to baseball cards.  I have cards that I have saved from when I was nine or ten years old. (Yes, they are antique.)  I have cards that I have bought at baseball card shows when we took the boys to them back in the 90’s.  I have cards that I considered “must haves” and purchased from Ebay.  So when I saw all these cards I thought I was in baseball card heaven. 

This old gentleman had left behind unopened boxes, unopened packs and completed sets of cards.  He had been a very methodic collector.  These things had meant a lot to him.  He had apparently spent hours organizing and cataloging them. But now he was dead, and now his family had no use for these treasures that their dad had saved over the years.  Sets worth anywhere from fifty to twenty dollars a set sold for two dollars a set.   And honestly, some of the cards were not even purchased.  Nobody wanted them.  They were useless. 

I walked on into the back of the home.  There on the wall were some great old antique farming equipment.  Yep, just like the ones I have hanging in my house.  I collect them and treasure them and hang them all over my house because they remind me of the way things were in the past.  I’m sure he did the same.  They were valuable to him.  But now, he is gone and the things that were important to him are being sold to the highest bidder. 

Could it be said that this dear man had spent a lot of his time and hard earned money on flea market junk?  Could it be said that I do the same? Could it be that we are majoring on minor stuff?

I don’t think there is anything wrong with collecting baseball cards.  I don’t think it is wrong to collect antique farm implements.  But I do think I am misguided if I think that these things that are important to me, the things that I choose to spend my money and time for will be important to others when I am gone.  

I believe I should remember that I should place value on things that are eternally valuable. I think this little trip to the yard sale has shown me that I may be placing too much emphasis on the minor stuff that will one day pass away. 

Instead of leaving behind baseball cards, farm implements, houses, land, saving accounts and insurance policies I should focus on leaving behind for my children and grand-children the heritage of a forgiven life and a clean heart.  I don’t care what they hang on their wall or save in their closets, but I do care very much where they place their faith and trust. 

Lord, may I live my life so that what’s important to you…is important to me, and may I leave those things in the path that I travel so that some day when I am with you and they walk along and trip over them  that those things will become important to them as well.