What Lies Beneath...

The house that I grew up in was always pretty tidy. My mother and father were both organized and able keep the house looking great. Both of them had their bad habits: my mom would stuff the kitchen drawers with nick-nacks and odd items and my dad had a tendency to leave his black socks by the chair that he would watch television in. Still, we could have company drop in on a moments notice without being horribly embarrassed.

There was one corner of the house where that organization need not apply. My room was a source of great tension when I was growing up. I hated cleaning my room, and it was amazing how quickly I could get it dirty. I am not exaggerating when I say that my mom would have me clean it in the morning, and by lunch it was already a disaster area. My mom would just sigh and have me clean it again. It was a never-ending battle.

I had a simple rule when cleaning my room: cleanliness is removing clutter from the field of view. I can imagine that you can see where this is going. When I would clean my room, I would start by making my bed. A nicely made bed went far to making my room look spic and span, but there was really an ulterior motive here. With my bed made, I could gauge how far I would have to push my stuff under the bed so that it couldn’t be seen when walking around.

Other great ‘collection’ spots included putting junk behind my dresser. I could stuff tons of paper, wrappers, toys, cards, comic books and plastic army men behind that large piece of furniture and no one would notice. Then there were my dresser drawers: sure I needed them for my clothes, but they could hold a nice layer of ‘stuff’ and then I could put the clothes on top.

To the initial glance, my room looked decently clean. But upon closer inspection, it was an absolute disaster. Often my dad would come in my room, flip up the bead spread, and tell me to get to work. He also would pull my dresser away from the wall, and look in disgust at my mess. I would be on the verge of tears. I didn’t want to be messy, but I wasn’t willing to put in the energy and effort to have a truly clean room.

This messiness also contributed to the reason that my room would get so out of kilter so quickly. Without fail, I needed to go on a mission to find a toy or a comic book that was mysteriously ‘missing’. I would have to plunge into all of my stealthy areas on a reconnaissance mission. I would ignore the fact that I was exposing the messes that I had so cleverly hidden. After finding the object of my attention, my room was left in worse shape than before I started cleaning it earlier that morning.

If only I would have learned and taken the effort to properly clean my room, I could have saved myself hours of re-hiding effort. The fact is, that most of the junk I was holding on to would be trashed any way. Why bother holding on to it? If it was important, why wasn’t it put neatly in a place for easy access? My laziness had won the battle over common sense. I could write on and on about how much of a bad steward I was (and still am) with what I had been blessed with, but that is another article to itself completely.

I look at my life today and the skeletons that are hidden throughout the crevices of my existence and I wonder to myself: when God convicts me to clean things up, do I try to find new places to hide my sins, cover them with 'good works', or do I make the effort to really clean them? Externally, I look good, after all, I work hard live a good, loving, kind, helpful, life, but what happens when God scratches below the surface a little?

Spritually, how am I really any different than that kid who thought he was so clever in avoiding really cleaning his room? Does my anger still get the best of me at times? Does pride destroy my witness? Have I cleaned my life up very nicely, only to stand in horror as someone lifts up my 'bead spread' and peeks under? If I can’t remove the flesh that makes me sin, when will it unexpectedly rear its ugly head again?

God dealt with Aaron and Miriam when they challenged Moses’ position with God. The bible literally says that God burned with anger against them. I don’t want to have that written about me. The scripture goes on to say:

Numbers 12:10-11

10 When the cloud lifted from above the Tent, there stood Miriam—leprous, like snow. Aaron turned toward her and saw that she had leprosy;

11 and he said to Moses, "Please, my lord, do not hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed.“

Aaron, pleads with Moses (‘my lord’ is not God in this case), to not hold their folly against them. Aaron’s immediate reference is this latest incident, but recall that Aaron was also the maker of the golden calf. The sin that Aaron didn’t fully deal wuth earlier came back to bring curses upon his household.

Unfortunately for my wife, my habits of ‘tidy-ness’ have continued into my adult life: my office is a horror that small children would shriek in terror at its very sight. I pray that my walk with God isn’t plagued by these same problems. I know that, with God’s help I have been able to truly clean up a lot of spiritual 'junk' in my life. It is never easy going through it, but the rewards on the other side are simply worth the effort.

So who's ready for some house cleaning?!

-Doug