G is for GARAGE

Like many people I know, I never put my car in the garage at night but it's not for the same reason as most of them. In my case, I simply don't have a garage. When we erected our house over twenty years ago, for some curious reason, we decided not to build a garage. I'm not sure of the exact reason, though I know it wasn't an oversight at the time and I guess it wasn't a financial consideration as it would have added little to the overall cost. I guess it was because my experience of garages and their use was generally negative, in that few people use them as intended.

Take, for example, the garage at mum and dad's house. It was constructed as a separate building across the yard from the dwelling, made of a single layer of blocks, had four windows and two very heavy doors at the entrance that operated on a fairly primitive runner system. Over the years a couple of cracks have appeared, most notably a largish one running almost vertically along the back wall, that allows me to view the countryside beyond. It was a big garage by most standards and one could have easily parked two cars alongside each other, except for the objects that lined both walls and protruded out into the space designed for cars. It has served many purposes, and has been home to all dad's cars down the years, but also for a considerable time, became the dwelling for his tractor, when its own home, a hastily constructed wood and corrugated tin structure became uninhabitable due to the presence of an abundance of logs, blocks and tree trunks transported from the orchard. But the car garage had some other less expected uses. For all of my life, it housed the coal supply in one corner and against the rear wall, an old float, or haystack trailer to the uninitiated, lay on its side, completely covering the crack that had been developing. Lying against the float was a selection of ladders that did not carry a government safety certificate and one or two old tyres. On one side, railway sleepers balanced on two old barrels, became a holding depot for fertiliser in the early spring and for broken apple boxes that would be eventually chopped for firewood. Underneath, lay a few buckets of 'slack' that was used to settle the fire for the night and keep it still burning until morning. In the front left corner was another barrel in which was kept all sorts of implements including a billhook, pruning saw, pitchfork, grape, sledge hammer and grape and also directly behind this, an old cupboard that had seen better days in a house but was now the resting place for boxes of nuts, bolts and staples for fencing and a couple of bow saws. Directly opposite sat a pile of fencing posts beside a couple of bales of barbed wire and a really old weighing machine that you could step on to and adjust. I think dad had used this at one time for weighing pigs. In the other back corner lay a couple of old, rusted unused bicycles, a wheelbarrow that bore the wrinkles of years of use and a covered wooden trailer that had carried musical equipment for much of my adult life. In the winter, but only on a really cold or frosty night, dad manoeuvred his car into the middle of all of this and hoped that the starlings that had made their home in the rafters, might be kind to its surface, but they were rarely so considerate.

I suppose all that had some bearing on why we didn't build a garage and although I'm often reminded at times that we have nowhere to store junk, the car's welfare is rarely on the agenda. Anyway, I take some comfort from the fact that many other homes are now converting their garages back into rooms, since they never use them for the car anyway. And I suppose there are plenty of folks who just don't bother to garage their cars. It's not intentional, it just happens.

The whole thing makes me wonder what we fill up our lives with when God's original intention for us was to have Him in our lives, to be like Him and to worship him. I suppose for some of us, we do manage to squeeze Him in, but not on a regular basis, for we have so many other commitments in our lives. For others, I guess it's a matter of there being no room at all so He waits outside until some day we clear out all the junk or else decide that He will never be part of our lives. I think too, for many, we don't intentionally shut Him out but we just never get round to doing something about it. Work makes us too tired, Sundays become self-time, the family takes priority. We haven't forgotten about Him but maybe someday?

Jesus says, 'Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.' Can we make room for Him in our overcrowded lives? It's time to take stock of the junk!