The Problems With Being Over-Prepared

I like to be organised.

 

I don't mean just a little bit organised, I mean completely, utterly, totally organised.  I like to be prepared for a range of events; I like to anticipate alternative outcomes and I like to feel that I would know how to react or respond to each of them.

 

To this end, I am often thinking about the future - I will run through things in my mind which could occur tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or even several years from now.

 

I like to be prepared.

 

But sometimes this obsession with the future leads me to forget about what's going on right here, right now.  I end up thinking so much about what might happen, that I forget to live in what is happening.  I worry too much about tomorrow that I forget to enjoy today.

 

Jesus warns against this fretting about the future in his sermon on the mount.  I love the beauty of this verse -

"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.  God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes."

 

[Matthew 6:34 MSG]

 

The thing about tomorrow is that we have no idea what it will hold.  And I can imagine a thousand different possibilities, but I won't know if I am right until they do - or don't - happen.

 

There is no point me fretting and worrying and 'preparing', and wasting time doing all of these things, when I don't know if the things I am preparing for will actually come to pass.

 

Instead, I want to learn to give my entire attention to God right now - to live in today and to entrust tomorrow to Him.

 

 

 

 

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.