Advent Meditation

For most folks, this is the time of year to prepare for the Christmas celebration.  Lots of activities to in which to participate... decorating, baking, parties, Sunday School Christmas pageants, sending Christmas cards - just a few of the things we do during this time of year.  

We've been doing some of those very same things.  But I've also been working on a project that started several years ago: the task of reducing the amount of stuff I have in my possession that my kids will not have to deal with one day.  We have made countless trips to Savers and Goodwill, the recycling center, the landfill.  Back in Worthington we filled three huge dumpsters - and we still have stuff.

One of the boxes of stuff I've been going through had several items that actually surprised me.  I didn't realize that I had kept them all of these years.  What are these items, you ask?   They are every year end tax forms since I first started filling out tax forms.  Yeah, no kidding!  From 1974 (the first year I actually started to fill out a tax form) until last year, I had evidently saved every one of them.  Here is a copy of that form (with ss info blocked out for security reasons).

What is wrong with me?  

Don't ask me why... I suppose it just became a habit - something I wanted to hold on to over the years but didn't need to.  I checked this out - a person only needs to hold on to the last three years of their tax returns.  According to a tax expert, a person really should hold on to the past seven years.  And I read this quote which really opened my eyes: No one needs to keep twenty years' worth of tax documents.

Guilty.  Not only guilty, but excessively guilty.  I discovered that I have tax returns from the past fifty years!  Who does that?

Not me.  Not anymore.  Sometimes you just have to make a decision to stop let something that you've been holding ono to for decades go.  Maybe it's tax returns.  Maybe it's a behavior that is actually harmful to you or others.  Maybe it's a grudge and you haven't forgiven that one thing.    Isaiah 43 tells us to look ahead to the new thing that God is doing - forget the former things.  Do not dwell on the mistakes of the past.  

Perhaps that is easier said than done.  But it does hold a lot of merit.  During this season of Advent preparation, get rid of the old things which you've held on to that haven't been helpful at all.  Holding on to them will only tax your spirit.

Get it?