Clutter

"If we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness." - 1 John 1:9

I have been struggling for the past few weeks with a problem that we have in our house. The problem is clutter. We clean ,we really do, but stuff still seems to creep in and the next thing I know I look around and it is everywhere and it is overwhelming. The clutter takeover seems to happen so easily. One minute the house is clean and the next minute every counter surface is covered in papers, kid's agendas, artwork, school notes, church bulletins, grocery lists, books etc. And all this stuff has me fantasizing that somehow the doorbell will ring and it will be the reality TV show Clean Sweep and their crew coming to deal with all the mess so I don't have to. They make it look so easy.

I looked up the definition of clutter and it said the following:
A confused or disordered state or collection; a jumble.
A confused noise; a clatter.
To fill or spread over in a disorderly manner.
To make disorderly or hard to use by filling or covering with objects.


Now this definition started me thinking not just about my house but about my head and my heart. Do you ever have those times where it sounds like there is noise in your head and you just can't think? Or you know you should have a more Godly reaction to something but you don't. Do you think that is because we let our heads and our hearts get filled up with clutter instead of His truth? I have been contemplating that and especially the part of the definition that says clutter is "to make disorderly or hard to use but filling or covering with objects". I have been convicted about how I let my heart get cluttered. I don't mean to do it but it is like my house and it starts with one little thing out of place.

I am going to take a lesson from my stairs. Often something gets put on the stairs instead of being put away properly. Maybe it is book or small bag. It sits on one of the steps and is not really in the way and we see it as we walk up and down the stairs but we don't take the time to deal with it properly. After a while we start not to see it and it becomes like a part of stairs, something that is just there. Then something else gets dumped beside it. We don't take the time to move this either and so by this time the stairs out starting to look like more of a storage unit instead of stairs. Eventually, there is so much stuff on the stairs that it is hard to walk up and down them making the purpose that they were originally created for useless.

I don't want my life to be too messy. I don't want my true purpose to be crowded out. I don't want to become useless. I am off to clean out some clutter.