CLUTTER!!!

What can I say? The blog is late this week. And I blame it on the clutter! Seriously. I am not just saying that because it makes for a great tie-in to the topic from last Thursday night. I really did find my weekend cluttered with too much stuff. And as I sifted through the clutter, inevitably, some things suffered the consequences - in this case, the blog going up in a timely manner. My apologies!

I just wanted to share a quick thought that came out of the table discussions last Thursday. We were trying to define clutter - because the first step to eliminating clutter is to recognize what clutter is. And the question asked was, "Is messiness the same as clutter?" Good question! My initial response was, "Of course it is!!" But after some lengthy discussion, I began to change my answer.

Messiness isn't necessarily clutter. Life is messy sometimes. And that messiness cannot be eliminated sometimes. Too often though, I think we, as Christians, treat any and all forms of messiness as clutter. But the truth is, messiness is part of the Christian life. There will be times when life doesn't make sense. Times when there aren't any easy answers. Even times when the right decision is the most frustrating and confusing choice. Or messiness can come when we find ourselves in limbo spiritually - when life feels like a mess - but God has placed us in that position so that we have to trust in him completely. So maybe messiness isn't clutter.

But I do think that messiness, if left unchecked and unchanged, can become clutter. For me personally, it becomes clutter when it begins to have a serious affect on my lifesyle - mainly my relationship with God. If the "mess" is allowed to build until it hinders my ability to see God clearly, it has become clutter. And clutter like that has no place in the Christian life.

Has clutter begun to find residence in your life? Is that clutter hindering God for having the "room" to do the things in you that you desperately seek for God to do? Just like in real life, occasionally we need to take time to assess and eliminate unnecessary clutter in our lives. Is it time to do a little deep cleaning? Or have you decided that your "clutter closet" is off-limits for God? That's not an easy question for us to ask ourselves. But we must ask it if we truly want to see God do all that he has planned for our lives.

Live cluttter-free this week! See you next Thursday!