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Purpose
For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good
works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
--Ephesians 2:10
We hauled the old couch out the door last night. It’s been demoted, from the living room to the basement.
The cushions we once carefully guarded by banning all food and drink from their presence will now be the dog’s winter
sleeping quarters. After all, its just the basement couch. No one will care if red Kool-aid spills across its pillows, no
one will give a thought to the buttons on the back when they come loose. After a few years in the basement it will be
demoted again, this time to the living room of some newlyweds, before making its final stop: the curb.
Carrying the old couch out the door brought back memories of when we carried it in. We were so excited back then,
before the cushions were barraged by baby girl spit up and toddler potty training accidents and the sodas I spilled while
watching the Yankees. (I tend to get a little excited during Yankee games.) It was our first new piece of living room furniture,
replacing the old parent to newlywed hand-me-down my parents gave us. It went to the curb. Out with the old, in with the new.
Eleven years, four living rooms in four states, and four thousand miles in moving vans later, the new couch was old,
one step away from the curb. The thought made me a little sad, not because I miss a sofa whose springs have lost all their
spring, but because of the futility of it all. Furniture wears out. As do televisions. And microwave ovens. And cars.
And houses. And clothes. And our bodies. All of the things to which Western man devotes his time and energy make the same
journey from the showroom to the curb, with a few stops in between. Carrying my old couch out the door made me realize that we
live in a culture where mankind’s only purpose is to keep the trash collectors busy.
The thought made me depressed, until I turned to the promise of God.
-- Names of God's Promises
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