Oh the joys of moving, especially when you’re downsizing to a home and office that are 1,000 square feet smaller than your previous location. It’s like trying to squeeze into an old pair of jeans you wore in high school. Our house, garage and basement are covered wall to wall with boxes, haphazard furniture, and miscellaneous items. Moving must trigger some sort of possession cancer. No matter how many trips to Goodwill you make sloughing off unwanted stuff, by the time you get home, it seems there’s even more crowding the rooms than before.
My pedometer says I took 20,386 steps during the move yesterday, traversing 6.9 miles up and down 9 flights of stairs. And that was with help. Yes, I took my own advice that I give in my seminar on meeting pressing needs and hired some guys on MovingHelp.com. The three young men from Perfect Movers loaded the heavy furniture. But when it came to the small stuff, they decided to amscray. Professional movers hate the small stuff.
And so I got stuck loading the small stuff, bad knee and all. You know that saying, “Don’t sweat the small stuff”? It’s a bunch of baloney. It took almost seven miles worth of walking to load and then unload all the small stuff. And I was definitely sweating.
The mindless work reminded me of the hundreds of times I have moved people, both as a part-time professional mover while in seminary and as a pastor. And yes, pastors move people, especially pastors of small to mid-sized churches. I joke about how the church is really a front for a moving company. The reason is because the first thing church members do when they move is call their church and ask for volunteers to help. My guess is that in my twenty years as a pastor I helped over fifty households move.
And so, dear Christian, if you have a move coming up, please, please, please don’t call your church. Those volunteers you want? They need to focus their attention on genuine pressing needs. Instead, do what I did, go online and get your help from MovingHelp.com. But if you have a lot of small stuff, I suggest you avoid Perfect Movers.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
For the past sixteen years New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North American and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt their widowed and single parents in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry
Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church here.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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One thought on “Two Moves Equal One Fire”
So what abou the fire?
Want to share a huge praise report with you. Maybe you could pass it on to the Gaithful Hands guys.
Had a mild heart attack Monday night before BSF, so I spent the night at Providence hospital after they put a stint in. Praising the Lord that my heart attack was so mild I didnt even know I had it at the time, and also for Sheila, my loving wife the nurse who made me go to ER before I had another one! She has been such a sweet blessing to me through all this, taking time off from work to be by my side the whole time, lovingly caring for me alongside the hospital staff. And in turn they have been so kind to let her be with e, even letting her sleep on the couch in my room so she could be with me. Many of them have committed on how sweet our love for each other is, giving us the opportunity to share the story of how God brought us together. God is so good! Pray We will give Him praise & glory & have opportunity to share Jesus with some of the hospitali staff. I expect to go home today (Wednesday). Blessings & praise to Him
John