Thursday, August 26, 2010

Moving day is nearly upon me!

So, in case you don't already know, I'm moving. Not across the state, across the country, or across the world, just across town. I'm trying like crazy to get work done at the church office, trying to pay attention at Job #2, and still trying to pack up my small world so that when saturday comes the people who are helping me move won't hate me. I'm going through closets, cabinets, nooks, and crannies, trying to get everything packed up in an organized way and I'm noticing a trend. Through the past year that I have been living at the house, when I've had something that I didn't know what to do with, or just didn't want to deal with, I just stuck it someplace where I didn't have to look at it. My hall closet has the most random assortment of stuff that I've ever seen! The drawers in the baker's rack are full of random papers, fish food, and left over Christmas candy (super gross!).

I feel there's a metaphor here... when something comes along that we don't want to deal with, our first instinct is to push it away and just try to forget about it. We stuff it in the virtual nooks and crannies of our minds and refuse to deal with it. Even when it involves someone else and they don't want to deal, we collectively stuff it in our hall closet and try to forget about it.

The problem is this: eventually those closets are either going to get full and the door will stop closing, or we'll move and have to clean out the closet quickly. Rushing through anything tends to lead to mistakes, rushing through cleaning typically means throwing things out we wanted to keep, keeping things we needed to throw out, or just packing everything and hoping we'll have time to deal with it later (essentially bringing our closet of junk with us to wherever we're moving).

What does God have to say about our tendency to stock pile our junk because we don't want to deal? I guess that depends on why we don't want to deal with it. Here are a few reasons:

Anxiety/fear. God says this, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:6-7).

Doubt that God can actually handle it. Try this one on for size: 1 John 5:13-15 "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him."

Our reasons can seem as endless as the oceans, but we need to understand that God is bigger, stronger, and more able to handle our lives than we are! So why do we struggle through our lives as if we're the only ones who can hack it? On another level, why do we try to avoid enlisting help when we finally start to unpack our closet? Embarrassment? What keeps us from grabbing a close friend or leader and ask them to go through our crap with us? No one really enjoys airing out their dirty laundry in front of others, but we are made for community, made to need each other. In trying to do everything on our own when we really need help, we're denying ourselves the joy of working in the manner for which we are created. God knows we need Him and He knows we need each other. Jesus, while on this earth, surrounded Himself with 12 men and was especially close with 3 of them. Yes, He was training them, but they were His companions. If the Savior of the universe surrounded Himself with people He trusted and loved, why don't we? Are we better than Jesus? I mean, really?