by Prue Phillipson
There is something about the increasing light – as well as the late winter weather – which turns the thoughts of some of us to spring-cleaning. We may be itching to get out into the garden to cut down dead stuff and generally tidy up. But everything is still too wet or too frozen, so our attention focuses on indoors.
The physical evidence of Christmas has been put away. Children are back to school and social visits have subsided. Although there always seems to be more days in January than in any other month and it is still too soon in the year to wash bedcovers and curtains which you want to hang outside if possible, there is an urge – literally – to get on and put one's house in order. But spring is now upon us.
Of course if you're lucky enough to be one of those people who always put things back where they belong there may be little to do. But few of us can keep all drawers and cupboards tidy all the time. There are usually unwanted things that can be taken to charity shops, thus freeing space so that fresh purchases are not crammed in anywhere. Besides, dust mysteriously gathers in corners and clothes especially need an airing occasionally. It is a great feeling to know that every nook and cranny has seen the light of day and you are now sure you can lay your hands on anything you want.
A God-given quality?
You may laugh, but I honestly believe that the love of order is a God-given quality. God himself brought order out of chaos in the beginning and saw that it was good.1 Humankind messes up God's order in big ways through gross sin. But we also do it in a thousand small ways through carelessness and negligence, just as order in a house is gradually replaced by chaos when people ‘can't be bothered' to put things back in their right place.
Sadly, trying to inculcate a desire for order is often castigated as nagging. If you tell someone twice, however nicely, you're told you're ‘getting at' them and it's easy to feel aggrieved. So what about the God of order? Do we never think He may feel aggrieved when we reject His call for us to do some spiritual spring-cleaning?
We think He's expecting too much of us if He wants to shake us up and make us look at ourselves with honest eyes. It might be a very good idea if we extended the urge for physical spring-cleaning to meditate on the spiritual equivalent. We all desperately need to turn out our grimy habits and neglected responsibilities, shedding a light on the piles of blame moved to the back of the cupboards in our minds.
A daily renewal
This sort of self-examination is much bigger and tougher than the making of New Year resolutions which may start with a commendable list of things to improve but which tend to wither away under a pile of convenient excuses.
Of course there are pitfalls. Just as a newly emptied and cleaned cupboard can quickly become filled again, so our lives, once sorted out and cleaned up may become prey to all sorts of new temptations unless we renew ourselves daily with the Holy Spirit to fill those empty spaces. We can't do better than repeat in our hearts the nine-fold fruit that God's Spirit should bring forth in us – love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control.2
If we can achieve these daily we might even escape the charge of nagging from those whose sense of order is not quite the same as ours!
1 Genesis 1
2 Galatians 5.22
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