Soggy Ice Cream and Sloppy Joes

A couple weeks ago we had a boys overnighter for LAMP mentors and mentees at the LAMP Post. I picked up four of the boys in Homewood and East Hills on the way to our first event, which happened to be the Back to School JAM at Ebeneezer Baptist Church in the Hill District. We made a pit stop at my house before leaving for the event, and while we were there I told the boys they could help themselves to freezie pops (alluded to in a previous post) in our freezer. We left in such a hurry that I did not discover the fact that they had accidentally left the freezer door open. Julie had gone to visit her parents in Ohio with the girls, and I spent the night at the LAMP Post, so the problem was not discovered until late the next day. By that time, everything in the freezer had melted. The frozen sloppy joes were ruined, among many other things. Sadly, we lost five gallons of ice cream that had leaked down the front of the fridge and all over the kitchen floor.

Julie had a bit of a "melt down" when she saw the mess, followed by giving me "the look" (most husbands know this look very well... we're instinctively trained to make up a response as soon as possible in order to redirect the negative attention onto something else). As Julie was burning a hole through me with her eyes, for some reason I blurted out, "Julie, just think of it this way. Because we reached out to these boys this weekend, there's always a chance that we may have played a small part in helping them to experience God and be with us forever in eternity. Julie, will your sloppy joes and ice cream be with us in eternity? I don't think so. Think about it."

I know... I still can't believe I said that. But in a way, it's a simple theological truth. The things of this earth will all eventually fade away (or melt away as the case may be), but God has designed all of us for eternity. We should all be living with an eternal mindset, and holding on loosely to our stuff. My response did get a chuckle out of Julie, successfully changing her anger into laughter. And yes, I did clean up the mess. But the point is... do you have an eternal perspective? Also, mentoring LAMP kids can be messy (literally). We need to be willing to put up with messiness in order to advance the kingdom.