Dear friends in Christ

Dear friends in Christ.

``A wise use of the wastebasket,`` says a prominent editor, ``is the secret of all successful editing.`` Perhaps only those people who have spent time doing the work of an editor know how true that observation really is. A wise use of the wastebasket is the secret not only of successful editing, but is in a sense, the secret of successful living, too.

Too many lives are filled up or weighed down with all kinds of ``stuff ``that should have been thrown into the wastebasket a long time ago. Such things as old worries, silly grudges, feelings of resentment or anger, which should have been forgotten long ago. are held on to and nursed along, serving only to make a person's life that much more miserable. There is only one place for all the old worries, silly grudges, resentments and anger-and that is the WASTEBASKET.

What a difference it would make in the lives of many families, many offices, many schools, many churches, if all of us would learn to put away, or forget about, all such

thoughts at the end of the day.

The Bible says, ``Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.`` (Ephesians 4:26,27) Rather than give place to the devil, we are to put the devil in his place.

In another passage, Hebrews 12:1, God says, ``Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.`` We are not to carry our pet temptations, prejudices, and worries from one day to the next. With God's help we are able to get rid of them.

The apostle Paul had learned the blessed use of the WASTEBASKET in his own spiritual life. He tells us. ``Forgetting what is behind, I press on toward the goal.`` (Philippians 3:13,14)

What a wonderful way to start each new day! Forget those things that God wants us to forget and press forward to those things He wants us to do and accomplish.