An unexpectedly free afternoon yesterday afforded me the opportunity to make a start on the Spring Cleaning. It began with tidying and cleaning inside my kitchen cupboards. A seemingly trivial task, but very much needed.
As I neatly lined up my jars of rice, pasta and flour in my now clean units, I marvelled at how messy the cupboards had become in a matter of months. The baking cupboard was cleaned and tidied up around Christmas, yet 3 months later, it is a mess!
This tedious job made me reflect on how many other drawers and cupboards need a good sort out, and how much time I spend cleaning up and tidying the same things again and again. It's not just the cleaning though, it's the mess that accumulates that astonishes me.
How do things end up so messy? It seems everything in this world descends into disorder given time. Knitters and crocheters will attest to how quickly a ball of wool can become a huge knotty tangle!
This phenomena seems to transcend to everything, not just wool and kitchen cupboards.
It's easy for stuff to get in a disorganised mess, but it takes real effort to keep things orderly. Things aren't naturally neat, organised and orderly. If we drop a huge bundle of washing on the floor, it never falls into piles, neatly folded (how amazing would it be if it did!). A rudimentary example but it cements my belief that our chaotic universe couldn't suddenly create order from nothing, and for any sort of original "order" or basic species to produce or evolve into something more orderly and complex is impossible.
But I digress - it's easy to pop something into a drawer to tidy it away for the meantime; put this on repeat and we quickly end up with a junk drawer.
Not only do 'things' get messy, but our lives can get messy too: relationships can get complicated, families can be troublesome, add a dash of stress or anxiety and our thoughts can become disorganised and our minds can get cluttered. Just as it takes effort to keep our houses, cupboards and workplaces clean and orderly, it takes effort to keep our lives organised too. The problem is, our belongings are easier to keep organised and orderly.
I believe God created the world with order, yet it has cascaded into entropy through the fall. God is orderly, He is opposed to confusion and chaos, and He wants us to be like Him.
1 Cor 14 v 33 For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.
1 Cor 14 v 40 All things must be done appropriately and in an orderly manner.
We therefore need to turn to Him to ensure we don't fall into a state of disorder.
When things are disorderly it brings chaos, confusion and stress, and these things are not of God. Just as every now and again we have to spend some time cleaning up and organising our cupboards, drawers, garden sheds etc, we need to give sufficient time to do the same in a spiritual sense. Letting God clear out our hearts and minds of unuseful stuff is just as important.
I believe that reading the Word of God on a regular basis is like being spiritually washed or cleansed (see Ephesians 5 v 26 and John 15 v 3); it cleanses us from the dust of the world. By reading, studying, meditating on and understanding God's Word, our minds are renewed or transformed (Romans 12 v 2).
Taking our study of God's word into a deeper place of not only reading it, or being able to recite the Word, but actually knowing it, feeding on it by meditating on it and allowing it to change us from the inside out through a revelation and relationship with Jesus Christ is the way to ensure we are not only cleansed but kept orderly too in a spiritual, emotional and mental sense.
At this very important time in the Christian calendar, it is a great opportunity to have a personal spring clean and get alone with God and seek Him in all His glory. Not for anything you need or want, but simply to know Him. Let His love and His presence consume you; let Him rid you of all the clutter, hurts and things holding you back, and see the changes that start taking place in your life.
Have a truly blessed and de-cluttered Passover.
