Spring Cleaning 

Just over a week ago I was working on cleaning our deck. It’s a pretty nice deck, we remodeled and refinished it last summer, and it has a special coating on it that is supposed to both seal it and make it easy to clean and care for. But… we also had these chickens that were free ranging over the winter, and despite the gate across the steps, managed to get on the deck and leave a few calling cards. And we had a pile of fire wood that was making it’s way in to the house, but was stored on the deck until needed. And our yard is pretty muddy all winter, and it gets tracked around. And there were some BBQ remains that were dropped by the grill, and some grease splatters around the outdoor range where we fry chips, fries, fish, and such. So… despite some sweeping and quick attempts at cleaning, it was pretty much a bit of a mess. But I wasn’t worried, cause I have a pressure washer!

So I cleaned stuff off and cranked up the blaster. And discovered that all was not as well as I thought. Not everything would come off. Some of those stains had melded with the finish and they would not come off. Places where the chickens had left their mark actually had dissolved the paint and turned into a black goo that was bonded all the way down to the wood. After a couple hours of blasting I got a lot off, including a fair amount off the paint that had been on the stairs, but it was not the sparkly clean I wanted or expected, and there wasn’t much I could do about it.

I’ve been thinking about how much that project is like our hearts. We think we can see, read, watch, listen to, hang out with, and participate in whatever we want, and we tell ourselves it doesn’t matter. Sometimes life is just muddy, and as we navigate our relationships, others say and do things, we say and do things, some of it is just the stuff of life in a broken world, but sometimes we dabble around in things that leave our minds and hearts stained with chicken … well you know what I mean. 

So where am I going with this? First, I think that life in this world stains you, and there is nothing we can do about it. Jesus himself ended up with scars that marked his journey. But he also showed us a way to live that allows us to define the scars and stains of our lives, rather than to have them define us. No matter how perfect you may think you have everything set up and going, you’re going to run into some mud puddles, get stuck in some ruts, slip in some piles of badly smelling organic material, and there will be times you’ll look out the window of your life and think, “What a mess! How did I get here?” 

In my busy life I find that things often aren’t cleaned up the way I’d like, or the way they should be. I often don’t clean up the shop until I can’t walk through it anymore. Than when it gets that bad, it’s a BIG job to get things back in order, and I always find something spilled or broken under a pile, that wouldn’t have been if I’d taken the time to keep things cleaned up.

So if you’re seeing things looking out of order in your life, maybe it’s time for a cleaning day. Maybe it’s time to stop covering up, pretending, and sending the pretty photos that keep the mess behind the camera, instead of in front of it. Waiting longer doesn’t make things better. In fact if you wait too long there are things that would have been fine that become unrecoverable. They just plain are wrecked and good for nothing but the dump. 

So what does cleaning up require?

1) Roll up your sleeves.

Understand right now that deep cleaning in your heart and mind won’t be particularly fun. It sits on the same list as cleaning the toilet, mucking out the barn, shoveling the chicken coop, cleaning the litter box, or washing dishes for the first time in a week. It’s going to be some work. It’s going to take some time. We don’t do it because it’s fun. We do it because we can’t move forward unless we take care of business. And we do it because if we don’t, in the end it will destroy us and everything good about us. So understand it’s not a game. It’s a life requirement. If you don’t make this choice, you’re choose the dump… and the grave.

2) Stop before you go

Deciding to clean up sounds great. But once you open the garage door and look at everything, where do you start? What needs addressing first? Do you haul everything out to reorganize? Do you push everything to the side? We live in a time and culture that tells us to make goals, ask where we want to end up, chase our dreams. We write and buy the books, go to the conferences, follow the programs. But this world is just shuffling the mess around. Showing you how to take different pictures. The only way out of our mess is God’s way. Jesus said it this way. “Enter through the narrow gate because the wide gate and broad path is the way that leads to destruction—nearly everyone chooses that crowded road! The narrow gate and the difficult way leads to eternal life—so few even find it!” (Matthew 7: 13-14) If our lives are going to get cleaned up, and yes, that is a good thing, we better make sure we know what cleaned up means and looks like. So if you want to get you heart and mind cleaned up we’re going to have to re-discover the power and goodness of the ancient practices of prayer and meditation. What that means is taking time to simply be quiet. Not to tell God all about it. He already knows anyhow. But sometimes we need to just shut up. And then when you’ve been quiet a little while you have to listen. And when God speaks to you you have to be willing to just say okay. Obedience matters. And then you can have a conversation about where your life is and what God wants to do with it. And all of that is called prayer. 

Meditation is something a little different. It has to do with allowing the word of God to come alive in you. It involves reading and memorizing scripture, but that is only the beginning. Meditating is still in that stopped quiet place where you allow the words to actually work in you. Ancient saints would take scriptures and simply repeat them until God moved in them. “Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.” “Create in me a clean heart, and renew a faithful spirit in me.” Most of us know where our lives are. And often have at least some idea of what God is saying to us. But meditating can actually create the momentum and conviction to actually step into the hardest places and do the messiest work, so that our lives can truly become a home for our creator, and a place of life, beauty, and peace.

3) Make it a daily practice

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)

“Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” (Eph 4:26)

I stepped in something that smelled bad last night. It wasn’t on my shoe, it was in my heart. It was a mix of uncommunicated and unmet expectations, others choices and communication, physical weariness, transferring some other hurts onto a particular situation that wasn’t even in the same conversation, and probably a few other things as well. Last night a few choice comments brought the smell out. This time I stopped and didn’t keep tracking the mess across the floor. But my heart was heavy, sleep didn’t come easy, and I knew there was business to be done this morning. I had to close the door of my room and spend some time listening. I plowed through a few chapters of scripture before I finally began to actually hear my Lord speaking into my heart. I had to say forgive me. And I had to acknowledge there is some relationship work to be done that might not all be fun. 

The process of cleaning up shouldn’t just be when things start to stink. It should be every day. We have to keep short accounts. We have to give and ask forgiveness every day. We have to listen and re-align our lives constantly. We can’t steer the wheel right before we drive into the ditch. We have to look at where we are and where we’re going, and make constant small adjustments that keep us on the narrow road.

4)Get some help

One last thought… Listening to God is  at some level an individual exercise. But in the end it always brings us into relationship with God and others. You can’t clean up your mess by yourself. We need each other. “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” (James 5:16) We’re all just like Adam and Eve in the garden. They were really stinky and had made a mess of not just their own lives, but the whole of this world. And what did they do? They hid out and covered up. But that is not the new way of Jesus Kingdom. Those following his narrow way choose the exit from this world that say, “we have renounced secret and shameful ways.” (2 Cor 4:2)

So if you’re life has some stains, don’t worry too much. Life remodeling is God’s specialty, and one day he’s going to have a new one of these bodies for us. But if your life is covered in all the stain creating messes, today is the very best day of all to get started cleaning things up.