For several years now there is a place in our home that has become a dumping ground of sorts. The place where the junk mail gets tossed, the newspaper gets unfolded, the craft projects sit in limbo, where school papers wait for parental examination, and bills get stacked. This place also happens to be our dining room table. Now before you judge me and assume we eat out for every meal or that we eat facing the television instead of each other, in my defense… we have a 10 foot long table and only 3-4 people who eat together at any normal meal. The table was custom made for me by my dad to fill my dining room space and to accommodate my past occupation. The table is handcrafted from the recycled hardwood floors when we renovated our home and easily seated the 10 children in my home daycare.
The problem with this situation is I repeatedly “promised” my dear husband over the last 20 years that I would never have a cluttered table! Needless to say, the dear husband has taken great delight in reminding me of my failed promise whenever the clutter begins to grow past the ends of the table and take over our favorite eating spots! In my childhood home, the kitchen table was an ever ready space for a planned meal, an afternoon snack, or a spontaneous game of cards. We never had to “clear the table” until after the meal was finished and I held that fact in high esteem and carried that goal with me as a young wife. However, since I began working at church and our daily eaters have turned from 10 to 4, the table has become a natural catch-all.
Recently, the Holy Spirit has been nudging me to examine my catch-alls. Not necessarily the physical ones in our home, but the tables in my mind that seem to accumulate clutter. The dictionary describes a catch-all as “any place where things are placed indiscriminately or without careful thought.” I confess there are many things in my mind that have taken up residence without much thought—grocery lists, punch lines from a favorite movie, news headlines, Facebook posts and much more. It is easy to get sucked into the information highway and line the shelves of our minds with liberal thinking, foul attitudes, empty thoughts, and untruths. But how completely contrary to what the scriptures have in mind!
Philippians 4:8 says “…fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” Can you imagine what the world would look like if everyone fixed their thoughts on things that were excellent and honorable?
As I clean off the dining room table and put things in their proper places, I know it will soon need to be done again. And so it is with our minds. It is not just a “once and done” task, but a continual process. Hear the words of this cleaning plan: “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” Romans 12:2
Forever clearing the clutter,
Erin Jacobsma