Posting items on Craig's List has been an interesting experience filled with meeting interesting people. Have you done a garage sale?
You stand there watching strangers pick through, set aside, discard items that remind you of someone, somewhere, someplace. It is an interesting experience. Every now and then you encounter someone respectful, someone who knows it is just stuff, as my bride likes to say, but they understand there may be memories attached to the item.
The Bible teaches there are sacred days and regular days, sacred fire and strange fire, times for planting and times for reaping. I am beginning to understand what that really means. Who made the tree of knowledge special? Was it really different from any other tree? Who made the Sabbath special? Is it different from any other day? Who made the fire that God wanted used for the altar different? When someone dies is their death just another statistic, common, normal? Yes and no, yes to almost everyone, but no to those who knew the person.
To anyone else, items at a garage sale are like what Lily said, just stuff. So it always blesses me when that rare person picks through carefully, respectfully, looking for a treasure. When they find something they like it's hard not to just give it to them, but people usually have garage sales to try and generate money. That being said, why do some folks get in a huff if you refuse to drop a price from $3 to $1? A little while later I think Lily gave it to a little boy for free.
Craig's List is much the same, just higher priced items. Why do people email you who have no intention of buying the item? Are they just lonely? Do they just like to mess with folks? Why do they ask why you are trying to sell the item? Isn't that obvious?
Then there are those who come to your house and want to haggle over price. Does everyone assume you have placed a high price on the item with the expectation that you will sell it for half what you are asking? Why would you drive across town, knowing the asking price, and get upset when the seller balks at your slashed price?
Just like the garage sale there are those few who research on line, know what a fair price is and expect to pay it if the item is in good shape. What a joy to meet these people! Is there any way to weed the others out? How do you separate the honest from the dishonest, the greedy from the fair, the goats from the sheep?
Lily continues to remind me, "Its only stuff." True, we are not defined by our stuff, and I suppose I have projected too many memories, too much meaning on items that are just stuff. It isn't the price, it isn't the item, it is the non-monetary value I have attached to the item.
In some tiny, infinitely miniscule way does God do something like this when God sets something apart? When everything is the same, except for the fact that God set the tree of knowledge, Passover night, the fire for the altar, the Sabbath day, apart from all the others that seem the same ... does our response toward those things God made sacred have anything to do with our attitude toward God?
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