Lost in My Attic - A New Year's Meditation

 

"Then Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, ‘I have found the book of the law in the house of the LORD.’"
– II Kings 22:8, NASB

 

At-tic ['at-ik] (n.): A place where time stands still

In the summer of ’99, my kids and I explored an abandoned Victorian house along the back roads of Pennsylvania. Judging by the odds and ends strewn about, this structure had last housed a young family in the late 1950s. My favorite part was ascending a dilapidated staircase to the cavernous attic and finding a stack of ancient newspapers—including one with a prominent article about the return of space monkeys Able and Baker (May 28, 1959). Being in the center of the stack, this newspaper was hardly yellowed after forty years!

2 Kings chapters 22-23 tell of Josiah, the most godly king since David and Solomon. He led Judah in a search for the purposes of God that they had lost under a clutter of sin and neglect.

As the priests, by royal command, set about cleaning and repairing the temple, they discovered the “Book of the Law”—God's revelation and covenant as recorded by Moses. The king was stunned to realize how much God had invested in His people, and how they, in turn, had walked away from His presence into spiritual wilderness. He immediately launched the most ambitious plan of repentance and restoration that Judah would know under the Old Covenant.

What’s this got to do with me?

I’m often expecting God to toss me some salient new morsel of revelation or guidance. Instead, I should be probing the cobweb-covered corners of my attic. There I would find the lost purposes of God buried beneath the clutter of a thousand failed agendas and projects of my own.

But, the good news is that "the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." (Romans 11:29, NKJV) As soon as I set my heart to "stir up" what God has already placed in me, it will blossom into fulfillment as surely as it might have done long ago. The only tragedy is that all those years lost in the attic cannot be recovered.

Is reconnecting with God your #1 New Year priority? Consider an exhaustive search in the attic of your heart. You may stumble upon the “lost” purposes of God—still fresh and un-yellowed after years of neglect!

---
Copyright © Brad Fenichel 2010 All Rights Reserved