It's Got An Expiration Date

A couple weeks ago you could've found me standing on a chair, organizing my little pantry. Don't scold me...how else am I supposed to reach the top shelf?! In the process of elimination (finding stuff in the pantry that was no longer fit to be there) I came across an ugly old can that read "collard greens". Now, someone had blessed me with this low-sodium gift three grand years ago (can't remember who it was so if it was you, thank you for the inspiration) and I have never gotten the urge to try them yet. Given the fact that we let people stay in our house for several months two different times while we were gone and that can never disappeared, I can deduct that I'm not the only one who found my appetite distracted by the pale photo on the wrapper depicting a dish that looked like it was supposed to be tremendously healthy but admittedly disgusting. In my fervor of cleaning, I picked up this eye-sore and was hit with an inspiration. There's got to be an expiration date somewhere on here! Surely, by now, this half-dented can has lived it's life out and needs no further time to sit patiently taking up room in my little cupboard! Eagerly, I rolled the can around in my hand, hunting for that date; however, to my chagrin it read some future moment in 2018!

I won't tell you what happened to the collard greens, but it reminds me of what someone else told me recently:

"All your problems have an expiration date."

I've been thinking about that. Now, for me, I wish I could roll myself around till I could see exactly when the expiration date of these problems might be, but I've been given clues that it's within the next 2-3 weeks. What problems might I have? Lately it's been hard for me to get up off the floor when I somehow get down there. I wake in the night to feel piercing leg cramps. I want to snuggle with my husband and find that I can't seem to get comfortably close. I can no longer tie my own shoes. Certain smells of perfectly fine food nauseate me from deep within. My skin is stretching so much that if I didn't have a clue as to expiration dates I would find it quite alarming. I huff and puff like a train when I'm trying to do normal things. As you can see, I have some current handicaps.

However, they are telling me that my problems will meet their glorious expiration date one day soon, whereafter I will be free! Free to let them go and free to feel like a new person. (Doesn't that sound like a fun experience!)

This whole subject reminds me of something. Curious? Well I'm thinking about it that you don't have to be pregnant to have problems that come with an expiration date. No matter how ugly the problem, no matter how nasty its wrapper, there is a date coming for you, when the problem will expire and you will get to give it a merry "GOODBYE" as you become FREE! Free at last. 

One day before too long, Jesus will return. Or one day, we will get to go and live with Him before He returns. That will be The Day!! The day that the collard greens roll into the trash can! (So to speak. My apologies to lovers of canned collard greens.) The Day that we get to trade in our problems for our rewards, for our Overcomer badges. Sure, some of our problems will meet their end long before we get to That Day, however this life will always leave us with problems of some kind or the other taking up space in our life's "cupboard". 

Take heart! The expiration date on your very hardest, most distressing and handicapping problems is coming up, and what feels like it will last forever itself will expire, leaving YOU free to revel in your lasting conquerors crown and celebration! The day our problems expire once and for all, we will get a brand new kind of life to live.