Thursday Thoughts 5/25/17

 It is strange how the smallest of things can impact us so profoundly. Things that have no intrinsic value or meaning can inspire a thought, and evoke an emotion buried within. For me it was a clothes hanger. I stood and stared at it for all of thirty-seconds as the image etched into my mind, becoming an expression of some repressed emotion.

Hangers are everywhere. Our closets have hangers with clothes of various sorts hanging on them, but none of them have ever captured my attention like this old plastic hanger. Nevertheless, there it was, hanging all by itself. As I stood there a thought entered my mind, “Leave it alone”.

To my surprise this was not as easy as it sounded. I began to wonder, why leave it alone? Why, not put it with all the other hangers? It is after all just one hanger. One silly little hanger. “Close the closet door”, a gentle thought passed through my mind. Slowly, with tears falling from my cheek, I closed the closet door. I looked around the empty condominium. “One hanger, for the one who will not move with us”, I softly spoke to the air.

I stepped out the front door of the condo and all I could think of was the hanger in the closet. Maybe I needed the hanger. The hanger became a symbol of that which does not come with us. Dad is in a place that I will one day go, but for now he cannot go with us. As I drove the two hours north to mom’s new neighborhood the words of the prophet came to mind, “God does not delight in the death of anyone, but wills that all would come to repentance and live” (my paraphrase).

The hanger began to take on a new image of thought. God doesn’t want any hangers left in the closet. He desires to bring all the hangers to himself. Some hangers will resist that will, and chose to remain separated from God. When Jesus stood at the tomb of Lazarus we are told that he wept. Many have given opinions about why tears ran down his cheeks. I cannot speak for the Jesus on this, but maybe he wept because that is what humans do when we look at death. There is no delight in death, not even when we know the result will be eternal life.

Death, even though it is only for a short time, brings separation. Separation took on the image of a hanger in the closet. The new residents will likely look at the hanger and toss it in the trash. After all, when the hanger was separated from its purpose and possessor, it was of little value. The new family brought their own hangers, why would they want someone else’s stuff.

I am so thankful, that although I was separated from God, he came for me. He did not leave me hanging. Instead, he became human and hung for me, on the cross. He opened my closet of separation, rejoiced with great rejoicing, and declared, “At last, my hanger is come home!” I could never move toward him, but as though I had found him, God welcomed me into his family, calls me child, and though death may separate me one day from my family, in God’s closet I will never be left behind.

Just a thought!