Cleaning House
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[August 19, 2008]
I
talked with a friend this week about an opportunity she had to help
a guy clean his house. It may not sound that monumental, except his
house hadn’t been cleaned for SEVEN years. Something had happened,
and his life as he had known it ended. Maybe something died, or
shut down, but stuff started to pile up—garbage, dishes, papers,
clothes—until it felt overwhelming. His friends didn’t know how bad
it had gotten, he hadn’t shown them, or maybe they just never
stopped by. My friend was the first in a long time. They spent six
hours cleaning, just so they could clear a path so the appraiser
could walk through the house. It’s not finished, and there’s a
whole lot more to do, but it’s a start.
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I
asked her how she had gotten involved and she said it was “totally a
God thing. I never would have imagined meeting this guy and
spending the day helping him clean his house.”
We’re all like a house, and we have certain
rooms that are open to guests and friends, and have even more open
to family, but usually at least one room is all ours. Over the
years, little by little, I’ve tried to clean up some of the clutter
in my home—the papers, the books, the things here and there that I
can’t let go of yet, and sometimes the useless junk. It’s not done
yet, but it feels like order is emerging out of the chaos, and I
realize this feels good.
There are still rooms in my apartment, and in
my life, that need to be gone through, and I realize some of those
rooms can’t be dealt with alone. When I get busy or avoid dealing
with my junk, it builds up, waiting to be dealt with, not going away
until I face it.
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It takes some vulnerability to have someone come into the home, and
see the mess. I’m afraid they’ll criticize me for having junk. Why
couldn’t I be neater? My junk doesn’t look like their junk. I’m
not supposed to have any junk. Sometimes we can’t clean up our
closets or ourselves on our own. It gets too overwhelming and we
don’t know where to start.
This guy had shut down. He was wrapped up in
helping other people, but was ignoring things in his own home. My
friend came in with the attitude of, “Yep, you have some junk. Let
me help you clean it up. We’ll work on it together.” This is what
Jesus does in us. We let him in our house, and he sees the clutter,
but doesn’t then turn around and walk away or abandon us, or refuse
to have anything to do with us. Instead, he kindly but persistently
helps us clean it up, often the areas that we’ve gotten so used to
we no longer see, or the areas that are so overwhelming we don’t
know where to begin. Little by little, what was once a garbage heap
becomes livable again.
[Cliff Wheeler - Professor at LCCS]
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