The other day I put on a suit and went looking for an old tie. I have a million ties in my closet but only two or three are wearable.

Have you ever noticed that, even though the style of ties change, an old tie somehow never comes back into fashion?

I’ve lived through a number of tie eras – the era when ties were so fat they covered your whole belly, but also the era when ties were pencil thin. And then there were all the times when ties fell somewhere in between those two extremes. 

I’m not even going to get into bow ties! But I will say for a high school event I wore a big, fat, fuzzy bow tie and it was “in” at the time.

I think tie companies must be among the richest companies on the planet. We are always buying new ties for this event or that occasion … and we never reach deep into the closet to find that gem of a tie from fifteen years ago that is perfect for my function this weekend.

When my kids were young, somehow I inherited a pile of ties from my father and father-in-law. And that’s another interesting fact about ties – they never get thrown out! 

They’re like an old Bible. What do you do with the old Bible when you get a new one? You put it on a shelf … forever. That’s what you do with it, because you can’t thrown them out. 

Ties are like that too. 

So we had this box of ties from my dad, my wife Lil’s dad, and a pile of my old ties.

My kids played with them. Sometimes they tied them around their heads like bandanas, pretending to be in a rock group. Other times they got Lily to wrap them criss-cross up their legs when they were pretending to be Roman soldiers. When our daughter was in her teens she even made a purse out of a bunch of those ties.

I googled old ties and found a billion things you can do with them, but no one suggested to keep them because they would be back in style in ten years. Yet there were no suggestions to just throw them out. 

So the other day, as I was trying to decide which of the three possible ties I might wear to my event (out of the thirty ties hanging in the closet), I realized that now that I’m retired I don’t wear ties very often anymore. I might not need to wear a tie for six months or a year … or more. 

There’s a real possibility that, for my next formal gathering, I’ll have to go out and buy a new tie because I’m fairly certain that the tie I wore in the nineties with a picture of Fred Flintstone on it won’t fit the bill.

I’m just wondering, how do I get shares in an old tie company, because I think I could get rich.

Here’s the thing: Having a relationship with God is a lot like our relationship with an old tie. We continue to have new experiences with the Lord. We learn new things about Him and discover greater depths to our relationship. But we don’t throw the old experiences away; we keep them and cherish them, and they encourage us. But we don’t rely on those old experiences. We always need something new. Don’t ever be satisfied with an old memory of who God is or what He has done in your life. Keep seeking to grow in your relationship with Christ and you will always have something fresh and new to wear.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How old is your newest experience with God? Is it time for a new one? Leave your comments and questions below.

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