Cleaning out!

I’ve been cleaning out my office this week.  Yes, in the middle of Holy Week with all the extra things going on – I’ve decided to clean!  ;-)  I told Dianne that I’ve felt the need to get some space – and that’s true.  And by working on the outer spaces, cleaning out the junk and sorting and organizing what’s left, I find that I am, at some level, working on inner space at the same time. 

And maybe Holy Week is a good time to do this… I need to be able to cast off what is no longer part of me, what is tying me down or holding me to the past, so that I can make space for what is seeking to unfold... most importantly, so I can make space for God to be.  How often do we let stuff pile up, not just in our physical space but in our personal space as well?  How often do we hang on to thoughts, beliefs, experiences that are no longer valid for us, no longer descriptive of who we are or of how we understand the world to be, or of who we understand God to be?  Certainly it’s not a conscious decision – at least I pray it’s not for me.  But if we don’t take the time to reflect, to look and really see what we have sitting on the shelves of our lives, then we may find one day that there’s no room for anything new.  More importantly, we may not realize how often we are responding to life from the old stuff in our spaces rather than from the love found in the light of God. 

So maybe Holy Week is a good time to clean out the “stuff” in my life – time to bury some things so that new life has room to grow.  When did you last clean out the “stuff”?