The Sunday Sermonette- Expiration Dates.
In June 1962, Mom, Dad, and I moved into our house on Wilson Drive in the College Park Subdivision. Vast stretches of College Park were then nothing more than palmetto-invested pine thickets crisscrossed by streets. I remember seeing our new house for the first time. Naturally, I bounced ahead of my parents and dashed through the front door. To this day, I can still smell the fresh paint and floor varnish, coupled with the woodsy smell of fresh-cut lumber.
To my ten-year-old self, the house was huge. I rambled from room to room, fascinated by the sunlight dancing through the windows. Not one, but two bathrooms amazed me. Moving day arrived bright and early the following Saturday morning, and by late afternoon, the Kalbergs were happily ensconced in their new house—and have been so ever since.
Mom and Dad purchased new furniture on credit from Sears and Rareback, as Dad called it. Our living room looked splendid with its Colonial furniture upholstered in olive green fabric sprinkled with tiny gold flowers. The oval hook rug gave the room a cozy, homey look.
Mom decided her new rug deserved a new vacuum cleaner, and Dad knew just who to call. He worked with a man at Keesler Field, as it was called in those days, who was also a salesman for the Kirby Vacuum Cleaner Company. I remember the night he came to the house, proudly demonstrating his product and stating how superior it was to other brands.
He plugged in the Kirby, and whoosh! The motor quickly filled the bag attached to it. However, he had a surprise up his sleeve. He attached a filter-looking device to the Kirby. He turned it on and vacuumed Mom’s rug, which she vacuumed regularly with an old Hoover vacuum cleaner. He told me to look at the device and said, “Read the word you see.” I did.
The Kirby vacuum had sucked enough new dirt to spell “Kirby” in dust and dirt. Mother was horrified, thinking her “clean” house was not that clean. She looked at Dad, and he wrote a check for $250.00, which is over $2000.00 today.
Fast forward to six years ago. I was tired of the old Kirby, so I purchased a new vacuum cleaner from Sears and Rareback and brought it home. I wondered why the sales clerk asked if I wished to purchase a repair policy, but I declined. I thought, “Why bother? The old Kirby still works fine. It’s lasted, and so will this one.” But it didn’t.
Since then, I’ve had the new model in the repair shop twice. The last time I did, the sales clerk informed me that replacement parts were no longer available due to the vacuum’s age. He laughed, “Everything has an expiration date, you know.” So, I threw that vacuum cleaner in the garbage, pulled out my old Kirby, and have been happily vacuuming ever since. But one day, my sixty-year-old Kirby will conk out because everything on this earth, including us, has an expiration date. Thankfully, there’s one thing doesn’t: God’s everlasting love for his children.
God’s love is mentioned twenty-three times in the Book of Psalms alone. The Holy Scriptures contain countless confirmations of God’s eternal, unconditional love towards His children. His love weaves itself throughout the Bible, from Creation to God’s covenants with Israel and then onward to Christ’s loving, atoning sacrifice on the cross.
All of man’s creations—from vacuum cleaners to spaceships, from majestic mountaintops to running rivers, from lofty literature to the miracles of medical science, and from human love and human hate—have expiration dates. But from everlasting to everlasting, the Lord’s love is with those who stand in awe of His majesty, His power, and His faithfulness. And to those who believe in their hearts that those things have no expiration date.
Ponder this and go forth.