...other meditations

spring cleaning

i can do everything through Him (Christ) Who gives me strength. philippians 4:13

i obviously dodged the neat freak gene when God created me. any white glove used to test the cleanliness of my house, would no longer be white, in fact, it would become unrecognizable. i was the kind of person who believed that dust was a protective coating for one's knick-knacks and I also believed that "if you move it and put it back in the same exact spot…no one will notice. well, here's the sad truth: there are people who notice. so, the light bulb glowed and the illumination revealed the dark corners in my house. through self-examination and soul searching, i realized that this was not how i wanted it to be.

first, i began my journey by acknowledging the fact that i am a packrat. i tend to hold on to things that no longer have meaning or importance in my life. i suppose collections and assorted gadgets are fine as long as you have someplace to store them. however, when these unnecessary items creep out into your living space, your mind gets cluttered with garbage as well. you lose respect for your home and begin to spend less time in it. after i recognized these true feelings, i made a commitment to do something about it.

when the cleaning began, the house looked worse than before. how is that possible? everything was everywhere and nothing was in its place. some items didn't even have a place. it was very discouraging. bags of garbage piled up in the porch and several more remained throughout the house. i began to doubt starting such a huge transformation. then, amazing things came into view. i had clean floors (floors? i have floors?) and cleared off counter tops (i have those too?). i realized that although things got ugly when i first began, layer-by-layer the bad slowly lifted away and a beautiful picture of improvement came into focus.

the Christian life is very much the same. we tend to hold on to a lot of garbage that we don't need and it begins to clutter our minds and hearts. we have those not-so-perfect areas in our lives that we believe no one notices, but we're just fooling ourselves. we also try to change things using our own strength and eventually when we fail, we beat ourselves up. sometimes, when little changes occur, we only see the big ugly picture of who we still are. but fortunately, God sees us differently.

to Him we are a work in progress. whether the changes are big or small, we need to realize something simple: we cannot change ourselves, God changes us. when we lose sight of that, a minor slip-up or one dirty window can cause great discouragement and self-defeat. it is through His power and strength alone that we can become the people He wants us to be. the only thing we need is the desire to allow God to work in us.

so, the spring-cleaning continues and although my home may never be perfect, i can rest assured that i am doing my very best in the meantime. and as our Christian lives continue, we can embark with a fresh perspective and a patient heart. no matter how subtle the change, or how ugly things get, we can rejoice knowing that God is hard at work and faithful in keeping up with our improvements and renovations.

under construction,

tamara