Yesterday evening ended up being a little off track from my usual Friday night laundry routine, due in no small part to getting in from work and taking an extended "nap". Once I did finally manage to awake and shake the cobwebs from my noggin I got busy. With the laundry in the wash I did a little house cleaning followed by a run to Wal-Mart.
On the return from the shopping trip, I ran into my next door neighbor, and we got into a conversation. Turns out that he just ended a relationship, that by his own admission wasn’t the most healthy of circumstances to be in. As we were talking I couldn’t help but notice the similarities of his situation to what I had gone through myself a few years earlier. In both of our cases, we saw the writing on the wall regarding the relationships, and knowing that they were counter to God’s word, we walked away from the respective relationships.
After about 20 minutes or so I made my way into my apartment and began cooking dinner. While prepping my gourmet meal I happened to take particular notice of the one and a half loaves of bread sitting on my counter. No, I don’t love bread that much, nor am I that big a fan of sandwiches. :) (Go ahead, say it: "man does not live by bread alone " ) :) The reason for the 1 1/2 loaves of bread is that on the rare occasion to actually remember what to shop for with out a list, a loaf was bought last weekend while my kids were 
over, thinking that with 4 folks in the house we’d surely go through the 1/2 loaf already there, call it preemptive shopping. Anyway, so I’m looking at all of this bread on the counter, and I notice that it’s not moldy! Yeah the things that a fella gets excited over. The reason for amazement I suppose is that bread used to be one of those items bough that would inevitably go bad before getting full use.
Thinking about the bread, I also thought back to the early years following my divorce, particularly how I needed to make some changes. An obvious change is financial. But what I was thinking about at that moment was recollection of shopping habits, and just trying to be more frugal (?) about my resources (food, money,time etc). This need for change was realized after having gone through several instances of finding in left overs in the refrigerator that looked like some science experiment gone completely wrong. Note: meatballs are not suppose to ever have green hair!
So between the instances of green haired meatballs, spotted pasta, 1/2 gallons of milk having the consistency of engine sludge, and bread that looked more like blue-green velour covered arm rests, it became clear that I needed to make some changes. Part of the problem comes from not having a feel for coking smaller meals. So instead of opting to cook different meals as often, it became more practical to cook a meal, then settle for a few days worth of having the same leftovers. Yeah variety is thrown out the window, but not as much food.
So all of this recollection of food gone bad and conversation with my neighbor about his soured relationship brings to mind how God streamlines the believer’s life. Perhaps some of you readers recall stages of your walk with Christ that called for a rethinking of priorities, activities and associations. I don’t know if there’s a specific order to this, but in my experiences I’d have to say that God’s Holy Spirit addressed my activities with a certain regularity, of which I ignored Him with equal regularity; "Oh" is he persistent though. Once the time wasting and God distracting activities were addressed, a renewed sense 
of priorities rooted. Now none of these changes were discrete, meaning they were dependent upon one another, but some things in retrospect did seem to require a higher precedence. The gist of this ramble is that God does speak to our heart on all matters, often attempting to get us to draw closer to Him by removing life’s distractions. Our part is to be receptive to God’s constructive and purposeful guidance.
John 15:1-2
1 "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.
Grace and peace be with you
