Day 5 of the great clean up

Things proceed and more of the floor is revealed and yet also more bits laid aside not dealt with in the past is opened up. Currently I'm about 2 days behind my schedule as the living room isn't completed yet. However I've cleared and dismantled my temporary desk which occupied the centre of the living room for 8-9 months. I also started setting up a drop leaf desk into one of my Ivar shelving units which is easier to control. Yesterday I got back into Christmas stuff again and had another find, a 15 dollar gift certificate. Not in the same scale as my May find but it still felt as grace.

Another gift yesterday was listening to Tim Keller of Church of the Redeemer NYC speaking about The Prodigal Sons. A new insight came as I moved more from the younger to the older and then my owner journey as the older brother. There are those who find birth order theories unhelpful yet according to their understanding "firstborns are more conscientious, more socially dominant, less agreeable, and less open to new ideas compared to laterborns." Put in other words they are stay at home, more obedient (outwardly at least), less likely to be wayward, and repress the natural rebelliousness that children and teenagers develop. The younger brother was lost but the older brother was lost too. Just a careful reading of the language and behaviour of the older brother towards his father is enough to see the similarities. The younger brother was separated from his father by his disobedience but the older brother by his obedience. However this obedience was a self-righteous obedience yet failure to adopt the values of his father. Otherwise he would have gone to search for his brother. Obedience and outward behaviour is not what the true spiritual life is about. It is not about moral high ground, nor about good doctrine nor really about judgement but being transformed into the likeness of Christ. Most of us in the faith are older siblings separated by our obedience rather than our waywardness. Staying at home, doing all that we think we should be doing. We need to rethink what is obedience or else we'll sound like the older brother.

'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!' Luke 15:29-30