"Aunt Bee Never Kept Her Leftover Chicken in a Ziploc Bag"

I have always wanted to open my refrigerator and find a plate piled high with left over fried chicken just like Aunt Bee. The problem is we never seem to have leftovers. Saturday I decided to cook supper and I cooked enough for our church picnic on Sunday. Sandwiches just never seem to be good enough for "this" over achiever's picnic basket. I might lose my nomination for Martyr, I mean Mother of the Year. I stood in my kitchen for 3 hours remembering why we only eat fried chicken twice a year. After I was done, I had enough fried chicken for all of Mayberry. I wanted so badly to find a really old platter and pile it high and place it on a shelf in my frig, but instead I filled up 2 gallon ziploc bags with chicken and shoved them in the refrigerator. My dream of being Aunt Bee was within reach, but for the sake of convenience I let the dream die. Aunt Bee never kept her leftover chicken in a ziploc bag. As I was standing their literally shoving these bags onto the shelves I thought about the convenience of this world we live in and how spoiled we as present day Americans really are. I want it all and I want it now! Have you heard that before? We want drive-thru food, drive-thru dry-cleaning, drive-thru pharmacy, drive-thru gas, drive thru banking and a drive-thru Jesus. We want Him there for our convenience, when we need Him and on our terms. We want to pray fast, read the word even faster and do nothing that will cause us sacrifice or take time away from our "busy" "convenient" life. We feel like the martyr if do anything for our family, for others, or for God that takes longer than 30 minutes. We wear the sacrificial servant badge if we spend more than 3 hours at church on a Sunday, if it takes over 30 minutes to prepare dinner or if we wait in line for more than 10 minutes with a good attitude. We are living in the day of ziploc bags than can be molded to fit our shelves, used as long as we need them and then tossed in the trash when we are done. The sad truth is that Americans as a whole are living for the wrong thing because one day all that remains of us will be stored in those ziploc bags deep within the earth and our REAL life will begin. I want to put ALL of my time, energy and resources into preparing for my eternal home. Convenience is but a fleeting reward if in the meantime we sacrifice that which will last forever. The next time you put something in a ziploc bag, commit to using the extra time it would have taken to wash that dish and spend time preparing your heart for eternity. It may not seem like much time, but if your home is like mine we use more than 12-15 ziplocs a day. Imagine adding even just that extra 15 minutes a day to the time you spend with the Lord. That's 5,475 more minutes with your Savior this year! May we live each moment of our lives for Him and His glory, preparing for eternity!

Ecclesiastes 3:11 "He has made everything beautiful in His time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end."