Tombs and Playrooms

Our family has struggled (okay, still struggles) with having too much stuff. It's something we are trying to work on, but it is much easier said than done. One particularly irritating area for me is the boys' playroom. It is constantly a horrifying disaster, because they love to dump everything out of every bucket on to the floor and then leave it there once they have found the thing they were looking for. Then it's a fight to get them to pick everything back up and put it away. More often than not, I will end up just shutting the door and pretending the room doesn't exsist.

We recently had another day in which we tackled the chaos of the playroom and tried to reset everything. During a break in the marathon cleaning, I happened to look over from my chair to see a beautiful sight. The floor was clear of toys, and the shelves were more or less tidy. It definitely wasn't perfect, as the floor still needed to be swept and mopped, and the shelves could use a quick wipe down, but it was presentable. Respectable even. This was a room I would not be embarrassed to have people see. And then I actually went back into the room. Oh boy!

Just around the corner, hidden from sight at first. So. Much. Stuff. I began to feel the familiar frustration rising up in me. I really just wanted to throw it all away and start over. Then I started to feel defeated. Maybe this is just always how it would be. A sliver of respectable appearance, all the while hiding a huge mess just out of sight. Does that sound like a familiar story? Perhaps one right out of the Bible?

In Matthew 23, Jesus is giving the Pharisees quite the dressing down over the way they are misrepresenting God to the people of Israel. They were prancing and preening as if they were perfect, and making decrees that fit their own interests. They demanded the highest honours for themselves while pretending to be humble servents of God. They made public spectacles of their offerings and prayers, but privately they were selfish and greedy. They ignored their own sin while holding the common man to a standard that they themselves were incapable of living up to. In verse 27 Jesus calls them hypocrites and compares them to whitewashed tombs. Beautiful on the outside, but full of chaos, death, and decay inside. They were so distracted by trying to appear righteous to other men, they were forgetting to actually BE righteous before God.

Am I saying that the struggling with physical clutter is on the same level as hidding sin while presenting a facade of perfection? No, not exactly. But as I stood there the playroom, battling the urge to cry or scream, I realized I have choices. I can accept the absolute toy carnage of this room, and spend the rest of my life just closing the door or sweeping the stuff into the less visible corner to make it seem clean and tidy. Or I can choose to sift through the chaos a bit at time, and get rid of all the things that are broken, or incomplete, or just no longer a good fit for our family. Then God did a beautiful thing with that mess in front of me. He reminded me that I get to make those same kinds of choices about how I deal with my heart. I can choose to sweep my sin and soul clutter into the corner, only to spend my years working hard to look good on the outside, and remain far from the life God has for me. Or I can lean on His grace as I work through my issues, regularly removing behaviours, thoughts and desires that are standing between me and God. It will take time, and hard work. It won't always look presentable and it will never be perfect.

But I think I would rather be a person in progress walking with God, than a whitewashed playroom.