June 25, 2021
Good morning! Aren’t you glad it’s Friday… and then the weekend?!
Weekends are suitable for cleaning out the garage and hosting massive garage sales. I’m somewhere in the middle of that process. Bringing my fat office of 35-years back home had stacked our garage fairly high. But with empty boxes piled high at the end of the driveway this morning, I asked the poignant question, “What kind of hillbillys live here?”
Additionally, I silently wondered how that person captured on Hoarders actually become one? Did the infamous hoarder decide to completely clean out his garage and then fail to strategically determine what would go back in-- and the gross collecting just happened?
Decades ago, firey, charismatic preachers spewed a message to teens that all of rock and roll was evil. Get rid of it or continuing being bad! Yikes. However, the heralded religious voices failed to tell a younger generation what to replace cultural trappings with. In the end, I’m not sure what help, if any, those rock music seminars actually accomplished.
Later, as I became a fledgling youth pastor, I realized that not all rock and roll is bad—nor were the kids. Some music was, and for that, I tried to provide good options for teenagers navigating the complex waters of society and faith.
Jesus said if you clean out evil in your life, you need to replace it with something good. If not, the bad will come back seven times greater – like a spiritual hoarding thing. With no good options for replacement, Jesus said, “That person ends up far worse than if he’d never gotten cleaned up in the first place.”
What boxes need to be unpacked or thrown away in your life? What space in your “house” is stacked, and it’s time to spend the weekend getting rid of habits, hurts, addictions, or abusive relationships? Has a culture of incessant doing and achieving created impossible waters for your faith to navigate? How does someone clear their schedule but replace emptiness with soul-quenching rest, breathing, and solitude?
Perhaps you’ve collected schhhhtuff in your life that you know needs to go, but you’re fearful of not having adequate replacements. Here’s the good news, the One who encourages us to lose our lives to find it also offers grace, mercy, and Himself for your freshly cleaned and swept garage.
Have a great weekend, y’all!
Blessings!
