A whole lot of nothing …

Since Scott Free Clinic started back in 2014, for more than 9 years a lot of our ministry work was done by using a local Starbucks (and our ministry car!) as an office or workspace.

Certainly not idea, but it temporarily met certain needs.

It also meant I often had the chance to meet a variety of people who come and go in the area.

Jess (not his real name) was a newbie to the community. He’s a senior citizen, and he and his wife recently moved to San Diego from the West Los Angeles area. The couple signed a nine-month lease for a two-bedroom apartment to give them time to get used to San Diego and decide which part of the city they would like to buy their next home. Going from a large eight-bedroom home down to a small apartment has been a challenging task for Jess and his wife. In fact, Jess describes the last year trying to accomplish his relocation as the most difficult year of his life (his words).

What was so stressful to him was trying to clear out his house so they could make some renovations in preparation for selling their home. They had lived in that large home for the past 40 years, a place where all of his children and some of his grandchildren had lived as well. So when it came time to clean out the place in anticipation of fixing it up and selling it so they could move, they were overwhelmed at the amount of stuff packed into every nook and cranny of that house.

“Everyone had left something there,” Jess said.

For forty years, this family had been cramming all sorts of “stuff” into this dwelling. So much so that in their efforts to empty the house they hosted an estate sale, they sold some stuff, then they tried having a garage sale, and they were constantly giving things away. It felt to Jess like getting that house empty was a near impossible task!

But all of that “stuff” wasn’t things they used on a daily basis, or even a weekly or monthly basis. Yet for forty years, this family pursued the means to get all the stuff they wanted, then got all of it, stuffed it into the house, and then, upon further consideration, found it all to be undesirable stuff to get rid of.

Chasing the desires of the moment distracted this family to the point of filling their home with empty stuff they strained to get rid of. Vince Olaer shared a little story about just how easy it can be to get distracted in life:

“We sometimes miss the great opportunities of life because we get sidetracked. I once heard the tale of a talented and gifted bloodhound in England that started a hunt by chasing a full-grown male deer. During the chase a fox crossed his path, so he began now to chase the fox. A rabbit crossed his hunting path, so he began to chase the rabbit. After chasing the rabbit for a while, a tiny field mouse crossed his path, and he chased the mouse to the corner of a farmer’s barn. The bloodhound had begun the hunt chasing a prized male deer for his master and wound up barking at a tiny mouse. It is a rare human being who can do three or four different things at a time – moving in different directions.”

It can be easier than many might think to become distracted and wind up living decades filling our lives with things of little lasting value, even if it feels important or desired at the time. Many people today are looking back at the past decade, and even just the last year, there’s a lot of emptiness unaccounted for, or a lot of “stuff” that just really doesn’t matter and could be pitched tomorrow and not missed.

What are you filling your life with? What will be the desires you pursue? What will you go after? What will you invest in? Don’t be like Jess who, one day soon, suddenly realizes you’ve filed your life, your home, your relationships with a whole lot of nothing.

Scotty