Sarah’s Purse

Rev. Susan Sparks wrote the following meditation to be featured in Dr. Doug Hood’s upcoming book, A Month of Prayer and Gratitude: Five Minute Meditations for a Deeper Experience of Gratitude.

As a minister, you love everyone in your congregation. However, if you’re honest, you have to admit that there are certain people you are especially happy to see. For me, that was Sarah Goodson. Raised during the Depression on a share-cropper’s farm in the South Carolina low country, Sarah loved two things in this life more than anything: her family and taking care of people. She moved to New York City in the 1940s to give her family a better life and became a nurse to care for others. She made those two things a priority in every part of her life—down to what she carried in her purse.

I always loved to see Sarah coming into church with her big ole pocketbook because I knew what was in it. After each service during coffee hour, she would open her overstuffed bag and pull out the newest photos of her grandkids (not individual photos, but the old school kind where you flip open the book and the photos unfold in zig-zag plastic holders all the way to the floor). Then, as the picture albums were being passed around, little Ziploc bags and Tupperware containers would magically emerge from that purse—bags full of fried chicken, collard greens, shrimp and okra gumbo, oxtail stew, hot corn muffins with blueberries, and, of course, peanut butter pie. One time I asked Sarah how she got all that stuff in her purse, and she told me about a gratitude ritual she performed every Saturday night. She would sit at her kitchen table, remove all the extra, heavy junk in her bag that she had collected during the week, then fill it back up with the important things for which she was grateful: photos of her grandkids and food to feed her church. It was a simple thing: cleaning out her purse. Yet it had such an impact, including the smiles on people’s faces as they looked at the photos of the grandchildren and the comfort felt by all who ate that delicious food.

Perhaps we follow Sarah’s lead and do a little Saturday night purse cleaning of our own hearts. Let’s start with this question: What emotional baggage are you carrying today that you should unload? Everyone’s answer is probably different. I’m going to pick one that I bet most of us carry: worry. Easy to do, fixes nothing. Rev. Joyce Myers once said, “Worry is like a rocking chair—it’s always in motion, but it never gets you anywhere.” Worry can take over our lives, crowd out all things that matter, even make us sick. But we have an alternative. We can clean out the purse of our heart and hand our worries over to a greater power. Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy leads, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Bottom line: worry or believe. You can’t do both. Which leads to my next question: What will you put in the place of worry? What is important to you? For what purpose are you here? I suggest that we follow Sarah’s lead in this, too. When I had the great honor of performing Sarah’s funeral after she passed away, the message that people shared over and over was that she had brought them joy and made them feel loved. Is there any greater legacy?

This week, do a Saturday night purse cleaning in your life. Identify the things that are weighing you down emotionally, physically, or spiritually and clean them out. Then, refocus on the things that matter. Spend time with your family. Share photographs that make people smile. Stuff a Ziploc bag of yummy food in your purse or pocket and share it with others. Bring a little love and joy to this hungry world. And do it today. As Sarah would say, “Life is too hard and too short to carry things that just don’t matter.”

Joy,