By the time you read this, the calendar will say that Spring has finally arrived. Some spring flowers have already blossomed, and baseball season started on March 28^th. This is the time when many people begin to think about spring cleaning, a time to wash windows, vacuum behind and under things that don’t normally get moved, and clear out a year’s worth (or more) of clothes that don’t fit and other accumulated clutter.

But what would it look like if we had a spiritual spring cleaning? Some activities might look a lot like the season of Lent when we reflect on our year, on our actions, on our inaction, and repent of our sins against God and against one another. But what else might this version of spring-cleaning look like?

Physical window washing removes accumulated dirt, grime, and the films that accumulate on the windows of our homes and automobiles so that we can see the world outside more clearly. But, just as dirt and grime accumulate on our physical windows, our personal biases and the misinformation that circulates so freely in the world around us colors our perception of the real world, and the people in it. Doing some spiritual window washing might require us to go out into the world, meet new people, make new acquaintances, and see new things. As I said in church recently, knowing just one homeless person by name, as a person, changes the way that we think about homelessness. Meeting the people who come to, and are supported by, the Red Bird Mission and its outreach centers, in person, changes how we think about the people of rural Kentucky. Making friends with the people in Harrisburg, Liberia, or meeting the school children that we support in Sierra Leone, helping with health clinics or building homes with my sister in Jamaica, or a thousand other experiences like that, will clear away our biases and make us see the world in a different way.

Spiritual vacuuming might mean that we take a close look at where we’ve been in the last year, looking under the “furniture” that we don’t usually move, considering the actions and the conversations that we’ve had, and… just maybe, cleaning up some of the messes that we left behind. Our friends and neighbors who work through any of the twelve step programs refer to this kind of cleaning as “making amends.” How do we clean up our messes? How do we apologize? How do we show the people that we’ve hurt that we are genuinely sorry?

And what about those clothes that have gone out of style and don’t fit us any longer? Don’t we have the same thing going on with some of our attitudes that we wear? Or the people who are a bad influence on us? Or the places that we hung out before we committed to following Jesus? Sometimes ridding ourselves of clothes that no longer fit is something that we need to do so that we aren’t distracted from the new path that we’ve chosen to follow.

As we begin spring, celebrate Easter, and do a little spring cleaning in our homes, we should probably take some time to consider the inside of ourselves as well.

What accumulated clutter do we need to leave behind?

Blessings,
Pastor John

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