I opened the drawer…you know, one of those drawers that collect old papers, pencils, warranties on products already replaced, unopened mail that you’ll read on the tomorrow that never comes…and there it was: a package of bagels. Puzzled by the strangeness of my discovery in this particular drawer, I asked my hubby when they were purchased. “I don’t know,” he replied, “the last time I bought this kind of bread for us was three weeks ago.”

“Three WEEKS ago??!!” I exclaimed! I examined the bagels closely and realized they not only were the forgotten item in the drawer…they appeared fresh and ready to serve. Yikes! That’s scary. Full of preservatives, additives, artificial coloring, and a whole bunch of unidentifiables inside…and they still had shelf-life. Really?

“Lead me to the fresh stuff!”

Man’s wise invention  of shelf-life does serve a bit of a purpose. In our day and time, many grocery items are accessible because they’ve been preserved for travel from farm to factory to truck to market to home. Our spoiled selves would suffer if that were not so. But THREE WEEKS????!! [or more]

There’s a closing time on all things. None of us knows when our time is up. The recipe for divine, life-giving preservative has been written into us by our Maker. When our purpose is fulfilled, we move to His designated [hopefully-heavenly-for-my-reader] address.

I’m not meaning to be morbid by drawing attention to the ending time of our lives. I’m thinking about serving our purpose while assigned the specific years by our Lord. The last thing I want my Lord to do is to open some random drawer and find me tucked among the unidentifiables with a man-processed shelf-life that enables me to simply have the appearance of a believer in Christ…but little service to Him or others.

Fresh stuff is that which fulfills a purpose, brings life, operates on a divine-timetable, and yields to when He says the time is up.

“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” [2 Corinthians 4:7]