Clutter

My wife has been on me about blogging more. She says that God shows me a great many things worth sharing and I am keeping others from being blessed when i keep things to myself.  Last night she said that it is a sin that i am not blogging.  “A sin is it?” I said incredulous.  “Are you trying to guilt me into blogging?”   “Yes,” she says, “you should feel guilty.”  Thank God for a wife who won’t let me sit idle in such things.  I hope that she’s right about this one and what i share in my blog posts are encouraging and enlightening to you.  It’s been a while, but here is something recent from a journal entry from January this year.  Enjoy!

 

I sit quietly in my office with my eyes closed.  This is in preparation to meet with God in prayer.  It’s one of those days when I just can’t seem to connect.  My focus is on my breathing, the sound of the fan on medium in the background.  In the quiet I hope to break through the mental blocks preventing me from sensing God’s presence.  The attempts to clear my thoughts aren’t working.  I try something else.  I make myself focus on a truth worth meditating on: God is in the room with me right now.  He is in my office.

I open my eyes.  The first thought: my office is dirty.  Not just cluttered or disorganized, but dirty.  I see soggy socks and shoes on the floor from disc golfing in the rain a day earlier, along with empty cardboard boxes, paint-covered drop cloth, multiple jackets draped over my sitting chair and a Baby-Bjorn leaning against an unplugged paper shredder.  My seminary graduation robe from 21 months ago hangs on a cabinet handle collecting dust.  There are bags of cheese balls and stale pretzels next to my collection of dusting and glass cleaning utensils, which is not too far from my collection of dirty t-shirts shoved in the corner next to the half-empty bottle of anti-freeze left by the previous youth pastor.

I think to myself: What a mess.  And I realize that in observing the pigsty that is my office, I have been distracted from what I was originally meditating on: God is in my office.  It seems strangely unworthy for God to be in such a dirty place.  But still, he is here.  He would be here if it were even dirtier (assuming that is possible) or if it were as clean as can be (which it rarely is).  He is here because I have invited him to be here with me, and God is not one to reject an invitation.  But it is not really this office I invited him into; it is my heart, my life that I asked him to enter, and my heart space is far dirtier than the room in which I sit.  It does not matter to God.  I do not have to clean up before he will cross the threshold.  He will come right in just because he wants to see me.  He does not fear being soiled by my circumstances or environment.  I apologize, nonetheless, for all the clutter he must step around, all the stuff he has to move just to find a place to sit with me.

“No worries,” he says.  “We will take care of it together in good time.  Now, how are you doing today?”  With a sight of relief, freed from the anxiety of having to impress him, I tell him how I’m doing today.  And the conversation begins.