A lesson in cleaning...

My mom decided that today was going to be "cleaning day." Rather than complain, I decided to just go with it because there is a corner in my room full of clutter that I've been needing to deal with for a long time now. I tried to ignore it, but it never went away. I said to myself, "I'll go through it eventually," but I never did. But, today was the day. I started pulling things out and going through them. There were binders full of papers from school/church from up to two years ago! It ended up taking me an hour to go through all of it! I ended up finding some pretty interesting stuff, and while it was actually kind of fun looking through all of my old papers, by the time I was done I had a giant stack overflowing with, well, junk. I separated everything into two stacks: things to keep and things to throw away. Do I even need to tell you that the "Throw Away" stack was MUCH larger than the "Keep" stack? I got the biggest trash bag I could find and started filling it up. As I did so, I realized how out of hand things had gotten in that corner. It had started small. That was my designated "school corner" in which I kept all of my binders/textbooks, but over time it became my "everything-I-can't-find-a-place-for corner" and I just let it build up until it was just a giant mess! I thought to myself, "how did I let it get this bad?" You might find yourself thinking the same thing, whether it be about the condition of your house or the condition of your heart. I began to think that a lot of the time, our hearts look a lot like that cluttered corner. Maybe we're still feeling guilty about something we did in the past and have never dealt with. Maybe we're holding a grudge against someone who has wronged us in the past. Maybe we're bitter about the direction our life has gone. Whatever it is, I think it's time to sort through the junk and be set free. It's easy to ignore it and hope it will just somehow disappear, but the reality is quite the opposite. If we let it go, the junk will just continue to pile up until our hearts are hardened and we become indifferent. See, I didn't realize how bad it was in that corner. It didn't jump out at me when I walked into my room; rather, it was a PART of my room. I got to where I didn't really even notice it. But once I cleaned it out, my room all of a sudden looked so much nicer! It felt more roomy and I definitely noticed a huge difference. In the same way, a lot of the time we don't realize how weighted down we are. But oh the freedom we will experience when we take the time to sort through all of the clutter in our lives! If you know you have some clutter that needs to be dealt with, let today be the day that you bring it to light and get rid of it! If you can't think of anything, examine yourself carefully. You're bound to find something that needs to be dealt with. Like I said, you may not realize it's there until you sort through and experience a freedom that comes from Christ alone! "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of faith. For the joy set before Him He endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Hebrews 12:1-2