SPRING CLEANING

Sorting, purging and cleaning neglected closets has been such a cathartic experience in our home this past week. On one hand the item being considered may have been purely unnecessary, cluttering, gathering dust, while on the other hand an emotional tie made the task difficult in the moment. The recycling depot, the landfill site, and a thrift store have been gifted with mountains of our surplus. The yard has been swept, the deck washed, the shrubbery pruned and the lawn given a haircut of it's winter thatch.  

We said it looked good - it looked and felt like spring!

Sunday morning brought new emotions - I felt like weeping at the sight of thick, slushy snowflakes blurring our landscape. My heart lightened a little as I thought that perhaps God was just finishing up his spring cleaning as well with a vigorous shake of the winter duvets in the heavens.

                    By noon the sun was out - the earth and sky were refreshed.

Once again I was delighted that the simplicity of water droplets would turn my attention to my heavenly Father who wants to spring clean my life as well.

    "Soak me in your laundry and I'll come out clean,
      scrub me and I'll have a snow-white life.
   Tune me in to foot-tapping songs,
      set these once-broken bones to dancing.
   Don't look too close for blemishes,
      give me a clean bill of health.
   God, make a fresh start in me,
      shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.
   Don't throw me out with the trash,
      or fail to breathe holiness in me.
   Bring me back from gray exile,
      put a fresh wind in my sails! "
From Psalm 51 in The Message