Noticings…

February 10, 2021

We’d invited them to do it, and we’d prepared for it, but it was a little uncomfortable. Ok, at times quite uncomfortable. This spring my wife and I intend to buy a house in the country with trees, and elbow room, and scenery. I’m prepared to make a 30ish minute commute to Faith – although that’s significantly more than my current commute which is about 30 seconds. In order to buy our dreamy retreat we have to sell our current home. And that’s why we had two visits from our realtor and ‘stager.’ Times being what they are the visits were both via video call. To prepare we spent the weekend dutifully cleaning and decluttering our house. Well, the first round anyway. We know we have many more rounds to go. And they weren’t shy to tell us that!

We’re not pack rats, or hoarders, but neither are we neat freaks. Plus we have the overflow of two adult children who have varying amounts of clutter cluttering up our clutter! There is lots to love about our current home (especially if you’d like to buy it in a couple of months!), but I confess that as I was holding the iPad and walking them through the house all I could see was the clutter. As we turned on all the lights the clutter leapt into clear focus. It’s everywhere. The task of getting in there and clearing it away is going to be monumental. But it’ll be worth it. It needs doing. We’ve put it off for too long.

I can’t help but connect all this to my spiritual life. The tie-in with Lent, which starts next week, is blatantly obvious. The season of Lent is all about introspection, and allowing God’s light to shine into the hidden corners of ourselves and reveal the clutter. Friends, we’ve all got spiritual clutter. All of us! Some of our ‘stuff’ is just untidy, or careless, some is pretty messy, and some may well be downright ugly. We could choose to ignore it and keep the lights off. But that’s not very spiritually healthy. So in Lent we do our spiritual spring cleaning. We let down our guard and let God’s light shine. Did I mention how bright that light is? And how it reveals stuff we may not want to see? “We’d invited them to do it, and we’d prepared for it, but it was a little uncomfortable. Ok, at times quite uncomfortable.” The big difference is that God’s light, while incomparably bright, is also warm and loving. And God will work with us on our decluttering. We are not given a list and
marching orders. We are given a hug, and a hand. And then we need to get to work. Something to think about as Lent looms.

Shalom,
Rev. Larry