For those of you who do not do that, think about that day you decide to do a more thorough clean than normal and you decide that your rug in your living room needs a big clean and the floor underneath as a result. You remove your coffee table from the rug - it's heavy because of all the stuff inside, so you remove all of the stuff too and pile it up somewhere to be replaced later. As you do so you remember the time you took that photo, the memory of the day you started the jigsaw that sits on top, but never quite got finished. You pick up that book you meant to read and put it on top of the one you've read 500 times. You move the pile of letters that needs filing to another 'to be filed' pile and you remove all the little bits and pieces that are handy to have lying about.....
And finally you get to the rug. You roll it up and discover things you'd put there to deal with later. The letter from an ex that you couldn't bear to throw away at the time. The card that tried to fix a friendship but you couldn't bear to read at the time. Pages from your old journal where you write in detail of the impossibly difficult time you had find their way into your hands and you remember why you hid them because to deal with them at any time would be painful and difficult. In amongst the mess you find an article that you'd kept because it had inspired you to dream big dreams in the past, but you weren't ready to dream quite so big just then. There was hope, but the hope got hidden under the everyday activities of life.
And of course there is dirt, and there is dust, and all those things that got brushed under the rug you didn't know were there, the broken bits of that mug you dropped on the floor that didn't get hoovered up and there is a lot of cleaning to do.....
You sit and you look at the mess, the piles around you, and you have a cup of coffee and you sit and you wait, but it doesn't move. If the mess is going to cleaned up, if the ghosts of the past are to be dealt with, if the dreams we once had are to be realised, someone has to do something about it....
The Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown seems to have created an atmosphere that has shined a spotlight on what is under that rug. In our churches, in our organisations, in our government, in our lives, the things that have been brushed under the rug to be dealt with later or simply ignored because they are too difficult to deal with are being revealed, entangled in the mess we didn't even know was there. As all the activities and busyness of everyday life has been stripped away, what has been hidden beneath the rug has gained a life of its own and is really raising it's head.
It's led us into all sorts of difference spaces - the blame headspace (it's not my mess), the 'someone else will clear up after me' headspace (I mean it's their job isn't it?), the apathetic headspace (it's not my job definitely and I'm just going to carry on the way I've always carried on), the 'let's unroll that rug again and cover it all up' headspace, the 'let someone else do it and we'll kick them while they do it' headspace ...... but none of that deals with the mess.
Perhaps this is the time to face up to the mess, the broken bits, the past and do some mending, do some clearing out, do some dealing with, do some healing and when we've done all that, begin to dream those dreams again...... lay down the rug on a clean floor, place on top a new coffee table and step tentatively into a more pleasant, less busy, better future. It might be painful, it might tear us apart, we might ache because the sticky mess in the middle of the floor that we can't identify involves more elbow grease than we ever knew we had..... but something needs to be done, because as the brokenness is highlighted, the mending must begin, the mess under the rug we've been ignoring must be faced before it becomes even greater.
Moving forward doesn't happen without a new start, forgetting the past doesn't happen if we are going to rediscover it again, put off the old, put on the new..... for that is the way in which we are taught.
"....take on an entirely new way of life - a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you" - Ephesians 4:24ish (the Message)
image from here https://images.app.goo.gl/rAF55Zcregi3cqCW9
No comments:
Post a Comment