I Might Need it Someday

Over the years I have acquired a lot of stuff. I’d like to say I know how I got it all but there are some things that, as I am going through closets and cupboards I can’t figure out how it came to be in my possession. In many cases I don’t even know what the thing is! But I know I kept it for some reason. I mean really, I might need it one day.

Packing up my house is giving me opportunity to siftthrough the things that I need and the things that are just taking up space. I am a sentimental person and that has made this experience pretty special by flooding me with memories of days gone by, moments frozen in time in a photo or memorialized by a ticket stub. (Or in one case the wrapper from the first piece of gum someone special gave me.)

Clutter. Even with all the memories, the ‘I might need that some day’s’ and the ‘that belonged to my parents’, all of this is clutter.

Making the difficult decisions on what to get rid of, and what to keep so my kids can get rid of it later is actually much harder than you’d think. But the truth is, none of this is imperative to my survival or to me living a good life, it is just stuff that is making it harder for me to move forward into the place where I am supposed to be. It is clutter.

Learning to live without physical clutter is easy enough, but what about the clutter inside? What about the internal stuff that gets in the way of moving forward, of looking to God to guide our steps, and to trusting that He is everything we need? There are many things that clutter up our internal lives, things like laziness, finances, relationships, addiction, self reliance, negativity, busyness and discontentment just to name a few. We have to make a deliberate decision to set aside these internal obstacles and commit to the Lord. In Proverbs 16:3 Solomon writes “Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and He will establish your plans.”

That is pretty cool! The God of the universe will establish your plans. He will clear a way through the clutter and bring you to the path that He has already established. This is a great source of hope for me, God has already established my plans, if I would just seek Him and His guidance in all I do instead of relying on myself to figure it out then this stress, self-reliance and negativity would not be cluttering my world.

Scripture says: Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His face continually. I Chronicles 16:11

Seeking the Lord continually is difficult to do when you have to climb over the clutter of your life, your thoughts, and your emotions. Seeking God means coming into His presence and turning our lives over to Him, all the mess, all the clutter, and all the things we are holding on to — just in case we need them someday.

Christ is enough and He has promised to meet all our needs, both physical and emotional. He has already shown His love for us in that while we were still sinners he died on the cross to take the punishment for our sins so that we don’t have to suffer for eternity but rather so we can live together with Him in heaven.

As I continue to de-clutter my physical world, God has been working to help me de-clutter my internal world as well, and in that I am finding great peace.

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