Spring Cleaning

My spare bedroom, turned office, is a wreck.  The bed has become a catchall for multicolored junk mail, letters, ancient greeting cards that I refuse to throw away, photographs that I swear I am going to organize one day, and stacks of old response papers and other assignments from seminary classes. The beautiful blue and white print bedspread is hidden beneath the heaps of outdated, irrelevant “stuff”. When I had to rummage though the piles to find an important document the other day, I knew it was time to do some serious spring cleaning. As I began to make plans to tackle the mess on the bed, I thought, Gee, what a fitting metaphor this is for my spiritual life.  Too often I have been guilty of allowing the junk mail of life to accumulate, and obscure my view of God’s purpose. His handprint was there, but my brain was too cluttered to see it. 

So, just like the plan I made to rid my office of junk mail and old papers, I made a plan to do some internal spiritual spring cleaning.  Here’s how I tackled the job:

1. I threw out “busyness.”  The first thing I did was to allow for some white spaces on the calendar that was ruling my life. For months I had prayed, “Speak Lord, your servant hears.” However, I wasn’t spending enough time in quiet devotion to hear much of anything. 
2. I pitched “self-will” into the trash can. It was beginning to take up permanent residence in my heart. I had to replace it with Mary’s space saver – “I am your servant, let it be unto me as you say.”
3. I shredded “impatience,” as it was another one of those character flaws that had barricaded itself in my spirit. 
4. I tossed “seeing things as I wanted them to be,” in the dumpster.  I had developed a habit of seeing things through proverbial rose colored glasses, rather than the way God was showing me.  Being the incurable optimist, I had a hard time parting with this one.

In short, I had to chuck those things that had become strongholds in my life; those things which blocked the cleansing and renewal that awaited me.  And please don’t think this spiritual spring cleaning has been a one-time event or exercise either.  Just like junk mail, busyness, impatience, self-will, and the rose-colored class syndrome arrive in my spiritual mailbox every day, and I have to go through the same process to toss them out.

What things are cluttering your spiritual life?