Spring Cleaning

Hey, I have to keep this article short this week.  I don’t have much time on account of how much fun I’ve been having this week rummaging through everyone’s roadside junk.  I’m really surprised that the search team didn’t tell me about our community’s “Spring Cleanup Week.”  I mean what better way to attract a Dutchmen to your community than to tell him once a year you can ride around and pick up other people’s junk—for free!
Just a few random thoughts about the junk I see along the road.
Some of the junk appears to have a lot of life left in it.
Lot’s of the junk has fulfilled its intended purpose and is now truly junk.
More than 40% of the world’s population would love to have our junk.
Lots of the junk are items people bought thinking it was really going to make them happy.
You can tell who the true Dutchmen are of ARC—there’s no junk along their curbs.
You can tell who the true Dutchmen are of ARC—their junk will be on the city wide rummage sale next weekend. (By the way, feel free to stop by ARC’s rummage sale, Vicki and I have some junk we would like to sell.)
Americans have too much.
It sure is nice of the city to offer to pick up our junk.
What were they keeping that junk for anyway?
Speaking of junk, all of the junk alongside the curbs got me to thinking about the emotional and spiritual junk you and I accumulate in our lives.  You know, all of those times when we get hurt by someone or by other situations when we find ourselves disillusioned and disappointed.  Or when we fall into sin and become filled with guilt and shame.
I often meet people who are like “emotional junk hoarders.”  They seem to love to wallow in their junk and if they don’t have enough of their own junk, they like to rummage around in the lives of other people in order to pick up their emotional junk too.
Well, in regards to our guilt and shame, we must remember Christ died for us so that we could be free from that junk.  As it says in Colossians 3:13-15, “13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ.  He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
And in regards to our other hurts and disappointments, for those who truly love God, he promised to recycle all of that junk and make it useful for building Christ-like character in us (my paraphrase of Romans 8:28-29).
So how about it friend?  Is it time for some spring time spiritual house cleaning?  Time to get rid of some junk?  May you and I always be free from the junk in our lives for as the Apostle Paul wrote, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free”.
And in honor of George Den Herder, for those of you feel like you have no value anymore, remember, “God doesn’t make no junk!”
Happy house cleaning, Mike

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