Too Much

About a month ago I came home on a Friday night to a horrible discovery, the freezer and refrigerator wasn't cold anymore, water was running everywhere, and the food was starting to thaw out. I called my go-to guy whenever there's a crisis like this (my dad), and he came over to have a look. The basic conclusion we came to was that the freezer couldn't defrost itself like it was supposed to, so everything had frozen up, and quit running. We thawed everything out, plugged it back in, and things have been fine ever since.

Here's the thing: the reason the motor in the freezer couldn't defrost itself was because air couldn't circulate on the backside of the freezer like it's designed too, and the reason air couldn't flow was because the freezer was too full of food. Did you catch that? The freezer was so jammed with food that there wasn't even enough room for air to flow! On Saturday, when I woke up to a functioning refrigerator and dry floors, my relief quickly turned to conviction. Here I was, the guy that's always wishing there was a little more money in the checking account, trying to make sure every penny is counted, and I had too much food for my freezer to handle. I couldn't help but think of the story in Exodus 16, when God gave the Israelites manna in the wilderness. Everyday the manna fell, and everyday the people were to gather just what they needed. God even commanded them not to gather more than they needed for one day, and those that did, woke up the next morning to rotting manna that stunk and had worms crawling in it. Somehow I understood as I was throwing out garbage bags full of food that had thawed and spoiled.

Now I'm not the kind of person who thinks we should feel guilty because we've been blessed by God with jobs, the resources to buy food, etc., but I was convicted and repented of my greediness, my storing away of food as if there wouldn't be enough, the fact that I just kept storing and storing and storing until the refrigerator and freezer said, "too much." Funny, somehow I feel like I should have known to say that long before.