IKEA & Toothpaste

Yesterday, Beth (my bride of 26+ years) and I went to a happy place - IKEA. IKEA is like the Disney of home furnishing stores. I have never in my life been excited about going to a furniture store until I discovered IKEA. Last year, we spent a day in the IKEA Atlanta store. Yesterday we visited the new IKEA in Charlotte - over 6 hours in a furniture store! This kind of thing is not normal for me.

It is overwhelming. Put it this way, IKEA has a cafeteria and a children's daycare area. You can literally spend all day there.

Needless to say, we looked for things we "need" as well as things that we want. I put need in quotation marks because, in reality, we don't need anything. We "need" more bookshelves. That was the primary reason for our visit. Honestly, we "want" more bookshelves. We will be fine without them. We want to rearrange our house and update some furniture. We don't really need to do it.

The funny thing for Beth and me is we enjoy dreaming and thinking about these kinds of things but we have a hard time pulling the trigger on such purchases because a: We're never really confident in our interior decorating skills. b: We hate spending a lot of money on stuff.

Regardless, we had fun and we made a few decisions about purchases and it was a tiring but fun day in Charlotte.

Then I opened the newspaper this morning...

In Haiti, one week after the tragic earthquake, they are saying that over 200,000 people are believed to be dead. There is so much death and destruction there. Relief efforts can't come in fast enough. 1.5 million people are suddenly homeless and toothpaste is a hot commodity now.

Toothpaste?

The stench of the dead is so great that people want toothpaste to line their nostrils so that the smell will not nauseate them.

And I need more bookshelves...

I just finished reading Chapter 2 of Francis Chan's book, Crazy Love. The title of this chapter is "You Might Not Finish this Chapter." Francis writes about the brevity of life and the fact that we don't know what a day might bring. We don't know if we will live through this day. I remember the day my mom died. If you had told me at 12:00 noon that day that my mom would die before 2 PM, I wouldn't have believed you. But she did.

We don't know what a day might bring. But we are to rejoice in the day. Rejoice in God's blessings. Rejoice always. Rejoice even in the pain.