Cleaning Out the Junk

While most normal people were spending the entire 4th of July cooking out, swimming or hanging out with friends, the Perrys spent most of the day cleaning out our garage.  It is amazing to me the junk we keep around… the kids love to keep toys that they haven’t played with for years, “Please daddy, don’t put that Happy Meal toy in the yard sale pile,” or “no, we’ll play with singing princess mirror some time.” 

Even I found myself not wanting to part with inexpensive stuff like hose repair kits, nuts and bolts to who knows what, and wrenches so old that the fractions were worn off.  I reasoned- “I’ll use it later.” But that’s what I said the last few times I couldn’t throw this stuff away. 

Why do we want to hold onto junk?  Why don’t we just get rid of the stuff that we won’t need any more?  That would make it possible to put our cars in the garage- the original purpose of the garage, right?

You see where I’m going, don’t you? 

That’s exactly how it is in my spiritual life.  In the garage of my soul I often find that I’ve allowed junk like…

* procrastination

* mission drift,

*anger

*greed

*jealousy

*pride-

you name it- to take up space for far too long.  It’s not that I want to use those things later- not at all.  I just find that unless I’m proactive about getting rid of this junk, there’s no room for the God who is supposed to take up residence in my life.  That’s what my life is for- the God-shaped hole, as someone described it.

What needs to be cleaned out of your garage?