I recently rearranged my room. Now, when I say I rearranged it, I mean I fully rearranged and cleaned it. As in, you walk into my room now and it’s a totally different place, the bed, desks, and drawers are all in different places. It’s pretty crazy. When I started to clean though, it looked more like I was ransacking the place. I started by emptying all my lockers and boxes. Half way through I looked around the room and went “wow, this is a mess!” And it was! I had boxes all over, clothes all over, papers strewn about the room, piles of toys or electronics, and more strewn all about the place. It was so messy that I couldn’t even in there. But that’s how you start when you deep clean a room.
Once I had organized the big items it was down for the harder part, organizing the papers. This was the point where I took all the papers I had found from the past years (all the way to elementary school!) and organized them. I had piles for everything! Homework, Notes from Friends, Drawings, Poetry, Random Notes, Bible Lessons, Verses, Journal entries, Music and I think a few others. Remember also, this was all stuff I’d written or had been written to me.Once I finished organizing all those papers I locked them all in a locker. Then I was finally done (after a good vacuum)
So what’s my point in saying all this? Well, I realized that we are sometimes like my room. As in, when God wants to clean us up, or rearrange our life we look like my room. I think the first step God has to do when cleaning us up is the ripping apart. Just like my room looked like it had been ransacked I think God pulls our life apart till you can see everything.
Once God rips our life apart I think only then can he put us back together. I think the next step in the process is God getting a giant garbage can and throwing all the uneeded stuff into, just like I did. After he’s removed everything unwanted I think he then organizes the large things in our lives. This goes here, this goes there, etc. This is the easy part, it’s all the obvious things. Then comes the hard part, organizing our past memories and thoughts. Just like I did with the papers, I can see God sitting down and making separate piles for everything. He goes through and re-reads each paper and then either throws it out, or puts it in the correct pile.
When I think about this it makes me think about what stage my life could be in right now. I almost would think I’m in the process of organizing the papers, but I’m not sure. I think that God might actually be continually doing all these processes in my life. At times I feel like he’s still ripping out things that are uneeded and undoing all my previous organizing. Other times it feels he’s putting something very obvious in it’s right spot. Whatever he’s doing I just want to make sure I trust him. He knows the final plan for my life and where he wants it, so I will choose to trust him.
So remember, when you feel your life is in the midst of chaos, in the middle of being ripped apart and you feel you don’t know where anything belongs anymore……maybe God is cleaning your room.
