Spring Cleaning

I always get the urge to spring clean at inconvenient moments: 10 minutes before I need to leave the house in the morning, or just before I leave work.  Sometimes the mood takes me just before bed.  Whenever it hits, I feel almost compelled to clean and tidy and sort right then.

 

There is no stopping me.

 

However, I can rarely conjure up this same spirit of ruthless sorting, organising and tidying when I want to.  I'm still able to sort and tidy, but not with the same gusto as when these spring cleaning moments occur.

 

Today was such a day.

 

I was just about to leave work when I was overcome with a desire to sort out all of the miscellaneous paper work which has been accumulating around my desk.

 

I felt so much better post-tidy.  I could see my desk again, things were organised and I felt that order had been restored to my world.

 

Sometimes I feel like I need a thorough 'spring clean' in my heart and in my mind, too.  I need to sort through all of the miscellaneous paperwork which has accumulated - the thoughts and beliefs, the doubts and disappointments and dreams - and I need to tidy them up.  Some need to be kept for the future and stored away.  Some should be thrown away and some can be recycled and made into something new.

 

I love this passage in Isaiah which describes this spring-cleaning process, this starting again -

 

"They'll rebuild the old ruins, raise a new city out of the wreckage.  They'll start over on the ruined cities, take the rubble left behind and make it new."

 

[Isaiah 61:5 MSG]

 

As it seems that Spring is perhaps finally arriving and as I start to spring-clean the places in my life, I want to spend some time spring-cleaning the places in my heart as well. 

 

 

 

Do I Prefer James Bond to Jesus?

I am James Bond fan.

 

James Bond is daring and adventurous and brave.  He is confident and courageous.  He doesn't run from danger.  He confronts his enemies.  He kills the baddies and he always comes out on top. 

 

And, in contrast, Jesus is ... Meek?  Mild?  Gentle?  Polite?

 

If I'm honest, I probably do prefer James Bond to Jesus.  But that's because my perception of Jesus is limited and restricted.  It is shaped by a stereotype, not by the truth of who Jesus really is.

 

We seem to have a cultural stereotype of Jesus who is weak and timid and softly spoken.  Someone who is completely out of touch with the realities of the difficulties of life.  Someone who only wants to talk about the 'clean' and neat and tidy things.

 

There is definitely a gentle, vulnerable side to Jesus - the Bible says that He humbled Himself by dying for us on the cross.  But there is also a passionate, aggressive side.  There is a man who will stop at nothing until He sees His people restored and redeemed.

 

When Jesus revealed His purpose and mission, He quoted the prophet Isaiah:

 

"The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me

because God anointed me.

He sent me to preach good news to the poor,

heal the heartbroken,

Announce freedom to all captives,

pardon all prisoners.

God sent me to announce the year of his grace—
a celebration of God’s destruction of our enemies—
and to comfort all who mourn,
To care for the needs of all who mourn in Zion,
give them bouquets of roses instead of ashes,
Messages of joy instead of news of doom,
a praising heart instead of a languid spirit.
Rename them “Oaks of Righteousness”
planted by God to display his glory.
They’ll rebuild the old ruins,
raise a new city out of the wreckage.
They’ll start over on the ruined cities,
take the rubble left behind and make it new."

[Isaiah 61:1-4 MSG]

 

This is a vision of someone who is passionate and proactive.  Someone who will free captives and pardon prisoners.  Someone who will heal our wounds and comfort those who mourn.  Someone who will care for our needs and will help us with the difficult task of rebuilding our ruined lives.

 

And Isaiah gives us another vision of this angry, passionate Jesus, whose heart is set on our redemption.  And it is a vision which could just as easily be describing one of James Bond's scenes -

 

       "I went ahead and did it myself,      
       I was set on vengeance.
       The time for redemption had arrived [...]

       Fed and fuelled by my rage.
       I trampled the people in my anger,
       crushed them under foot in my wrath,
       soaked the earth with their lifeblood."

 

       [Isaiah 63:4,6 MSG]

 

Do I prefer James Bond to Jesus?

 

Sometimes. 

 

But only until I look at who Jesus really is and what He has really done for me.


 

 

Rubble and Rebuilding

Walking home this afternoon, I spotted a derelict building that I have never noticed before.  The windows were blocked up and ivy was crawling up the walls.  As I glanced to the left, I saw a pile of rubble towering over the nearby car park.

A picture of despair and hopelessness.

Or is it?

My first reaction was to think: What a shame.  A beautiful old building has gone to waste and a pile of rubble has been left behind where another building once stood.

However, whilst these two things certainly wouldn't make it into a promotional ad for the town, God showed me something beautiful about them.  They are not an end in themselves.  They are a sign of hope and potential, a signal of something new on the way.

Sometimes we need to be broken in order to be rebuilt.

In their book, 'Deep Church', Frog and Amy Orr-Ewing outline four key processes for the rebuilding of the church, based on Haggai 1.  I think that the principles are just as relevant to us as we seek to rebuild ourselves:

Some rubbish needed to be cleared - reformation.  Some stones could be retained as good material - retrieval.  But new wood was needed from the mountains - renewal.  And a promise of acceptance, salvation and glory remained - revival.

We can't rebuild without sometimes first unbuilding and getting rid of what has gone before.  Sometimes we need to remove false ideas and ideals; we need to demolish and destroy lies and strongholds which have choked us.  We need to get rid of what was, to make way for what will be.

But that doesn't mean that we need to get rid of everything in order to rebuild.  Sometimes we can use the rubble and fashion it into something new.  This is one of my favourite verses in the whole Bible: 

"You'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,
rebuild the foundations from out of your past.
You'll be known as those who can fix anything,
restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
make the community livable again."

[Isaiah 58:12 MSG]

 I came across this profound statement the other day (on this blog - http://brokencameras.com/tag/pain/) and I have been thinking about it ever since:

"Ruin is the starting point of transformation."

I know that in my own life, it has been in moments of complete brokenness, when everything I have lovingly built up has been razed to the ground and the foundations themselves are shaking, that I have found new life.

And in this broken state, Jesus promises to be close to us and to help to rebuild us:

"He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners."

[Isaiah 61:1 NIV]

Sometimes we need to be broken in order to be rebuilt.