Pastor Art mentioned traveling lightly in a sermon sometime ago, and it really hit home for me. My family could not go on a simple picnic with just hotdogs, without packing plates, cups, napkins, table cloth, silver ware, a Coleman stove, a pot for heating water for the hotdogs, and dish detergent for washing up. We carried more stuff than General Patton took on the invasion of Sicily. Needless to say we didn’t have a lot of picnics. I was envious of people who on the spur of the moment went to a store, bought a package of hotdogs and then found wood for a fire and sticks to roast the hotdogs.

Some of the baggage we carry with us in life is physical. I have to watch myself whenever I start thinking that maybe I need to rent a storage unit. For what, I ask myself. To put stuff in that I haven’t used in 20 years and probably never will use? Who needs so much junk?

The more serious life burdens are emotional. We are burdened by regrets, things we should have done and didn’t, or shouldn’t have done and did. Or we carry around resentments, like Tommy Smothers complaining about his brother, “Mom always liked you best.” Or we have an inordinate need to control other people, like Aunt Gertrude who is forever rewriting her will to keep the relatives in line.

We don’t need any of that baggage. Let it go. Put your trust in God who will keep you in all things.

Read Psalm 55:22 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne