Summer Cleaning

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Ephesians 5:8-14 (NIV)

The problem with cleaning is once you start, it’s hard to stop. I don’t mean the light going over, just wiping down kitchen counters and sweeping the sand off the floor. I mean the kind of cleaning where you scrub walls and baseboards, wash windows and dust blinds. I had not intended on working so hard today. When we got home from church, I was contemplating reading a book or taking a nap. Even though I took a three hour nap yesterday afternoon and then, slept for another eleven hours last night, I was still tired. I’m fighting a cold or allergies or something and have a cough and a bit of a sore throat. So, the nap sounded really good to me. Then, husband announced he was going out to attack the weeds in the pasture. Being out in the heat was the last thing I wanted to do, but I couldn’t exactly crawl into bed while he was out there working to make a better place for my horse to live. Yet, it was scorching out there today, so, I said the first thing I could think of to avoid going outside. “I’m going to clean the kitchen and get rid of some of this junk,” I replied. He just rolled his eyes, seeing through my excuse. Once committed, I had to follow through. Though he was back in the house in about fifteen minutes having realized it was just to hot to work outside, I had already started pulling the kitchen and breakfast room apart. Moving furniture, taking down curtains to wash, mixing up Windex and Lysol to clean the blinds. When I realized he was planning on a nap, I headed him off and started him scrubbing the ceiling which someone had sprayed with soda “on accident”. That will teach him to think about anything else than napping on Sunday afternoons! He pitched in to help, moving from the ceiling to getting rid of the cobwebs I could not reach, then vacuuming under the refrigerator and taking down and cleaning the air conditioning vents. We worked hard for several hours, rearranged some furniture and threw away some junk. The kitchen and breakfast room look really good now. My sister came by and asked what got us so inspired to turn things upside down. I muttered some excuse not wanting to admit I started it to get out of some other work when all I really wanted to do was sleep. Sometimes, in my spiritual life I am like that. I would rather just coast on through the days, not thinking about anything hard or examining my life for sin. But, God wants me to do more than a hit and miss check of my life. He shines a light into all the dark crevices requiring me to get to the bottom of the mess and do a thorough cleansing. But, once the last little bit of crud has been wiped clean, then, He grants me rest.