Unclaimed Baggage

This post is adapted from an article by Peter W. Marty, Sin is like a suitcase abandoned at the baggage claim | The Christian Century

In every airport, not far from the luggage carousels, there is a room for unclaimed baggage.  Sometimes it goes unclaimed for a few days, but some of the baggage has been there for years. 

Pastor and author, Peter W. Marty, suggests that sin is like a suitcase abandoned at baggage claim.  All of us carry a great deal of unclaimed baggage around with us every day—wounds inflicted on us from childhood or failed relationships, wounds we have inflicted on our children or spouses, sins and failures of which we are ashamed.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could dump all of that baggage at some airport terminal and leave it there? 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.  The only way to deal with emotional and spiritual baggage is to claim it and do the hard work of sorting through it.  If we don’t, that baggage has a way bursting open at the most inconvenient times and filling our lives with an awful stench.   

Peter Marty makes a good observation

What if we used Lent to unzip the luggage we tote around so that God can have a good look at the contents? Allow guilt some fresh air, and grievances the light of day. Permit shame, squeezed between the yellowed shirt and the old shoes, a chance to dry out in the sun. Pull out the pride packed in so awkwardly.

God doesn’t need to poke through our laundry like a TSA agent with a gauze swab on a stick. God already knows the complicated stuff that’s in there.

I don’t know of a better occasion than these 40 days for welcoming the One whose desire is to repack our suitcase with a new wardrobe—compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, all sized to fit. These new threads come with a luggage ID tag, by the way. It happens to look an awful lot like a cross. (source: Sin is like a suitcase abandoned at the baggage claim | The Christian Century)

The only way to deal with our baggage is through the cross, because only Jesus has the remedy for what afflicts us.