Today’s devotional: spiritual spring cleaning
Did you do any spring cleaning this year? Each year as winter draws slowly to a close and the last piles of snow melt away, I count down the days until it’s finally warm enough to open the house windows and let the spring breeze in. It’s the time-honored tradition of spring cleaning, when all the little household chores, repairs, and cleanups that have been put off all winter must finally be dealt with.
This devotional from Delve Into Jesus uses the metaphor of spring cleaning to make a point about our Christian faith: it’s important to periodically conduct a “spring cleaning” of your spiritual life. “Little” sins and unhealthy habits have a way of accumulating over time if we let them, and there comes a time when we must grit our teeth and clean them out:
Dealing with sin in our lives is a bit like taking care of chores around the house. None of us are free from the need to battle sin; it is an ever-present, daily struggle to identify and weed out problem areas where we are not living the life Jesus intends for us. The more frequently and diligently we do this, the cleaner our spirit will be. If we neglect this task entirely, it won’t take long before we are wading in filth and grime.
Most of us do an admirable job of identifying and tackling the bigger sins, even if we don’t always win the fight every time…. But how are we doing with the little sins? I’m referring to the ones which keep getting put off and pushed down our chore list as we battle for control over the larger and more serious sins. We can procrastinate for a little while, but eventually the combined effect on your spiritual health of these so-called “smaller” sins can cause just as much damage as the larger ones. If we are going to keep our spirits clean and healthy, then maybe it’s time for a little spring cleaning.
Can you relate to this experience? Have you allowed sins or habits to accumulate in your life, but you keep putting off the task of confronting them? If you cleaned your physical house out earlier this year but still need to clean out your spiritual house, stop putting it off—do a little spiritual spring cleaning today!
