WHO'S DOING THE INVENTORY, YOU OR THE BIG MAC?

Every first of year at the hardware store we do the most dreaded of all things. Inventory. There's nothing exciting about counting 20,000 different items. Especially with some items quantities reach into the thousands. It's also depressing to find thousands of dollars worth of theft, dead stock, and overstocked items. Still, it must be done to accurately access where you are or forecast where you are going. Inventory usually invites truth and change. Truth isn't always pretty, and change is rarely easy. About the only thing with inventory I look forward to is finishing it.

   You know who needs to do inventory? Our nation. Collectively and individually we need to take personal inventory. We need to not only to compile the data but to apply real efforts to make changes. Cut the dead stock, write off the theft, trim the fat. Grow the good things. It's biblical. Psalm 139 says:
²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart: Try me, and know my thoughts;
²⁴ And see if there be any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting.
 To avoid disaster, to reach our goals, we have to be honest. If I say I want to loose weight, I am trying to loose weight, while holding a BIG Mac, who do you believe me or the Big Mac? When the media tells me we have avoided the physical cliff, I believe the numbers. All 16 trillion  unpaid dollars growing faster than the average mind can comprehend says something different. We have fallen over the cliff with no bottom insight and with no plan to climb back up the mountain. Still, some of us know of ever larger debts that have been forgiven. Over our heads and in the grip of sin, we where born already fallen over the spiritual cliff, already at the bottom. Now we know the grasp of grace and our fate is held in the hand of the creator. He alone supplies us.  He alone can save us. He dispatched His son, Jesus, to bottom of the abyss to rescue us. By the way of the cross and empty tomb he provides a way up and out from the pit. We need only to take an honest inventory of ourselves to know we need him. I pray you join with him and He increases our lives abundantly in 2013.