My Mama used to say, “Everybody needs to move every three years to clean out their junk.” A wise saying from a very wise woman.
While preparing to move recently, I found things I thought were lost. I also found things I had forgotten. I found AC adapters with no idea to where they belonged. I had bags of yarn I had intended to knit into scarves or afghans. I found clothes that had hung in the closet for years, thinking “Well, I might be able to wear that again when I lose some weight.” I found socks with no mate thinking I would eventually find the other. I had cans of food for the purpose of trying out a new recipe that I somehow never got around to cooking. I found books piled away in a corner waiting to be read. All these things only served to create clutter … junk. We pick up things here and there, intending to put them to use, but never doing so. Before we realize it, we have closets and garages full of junk. I began to wonder why we hold on to things that should have been thrown away long ago. We all have the thought we will one day purge our home of this junk, but we usually just think, “Someday I'll use that.”
Our closets and garages are not the only place we hoard junk. We also hide junk in our hearts without realizing we are doing so. This 'junk' goes by many names. We hold on to grudges, turning love into cold indifference. We fail to forgive those who have hurt us, hardening our hearts. We hold on to anger until it turns into bitterness, poisoning our heart. We hold on to envy and jealousy bringing strife into our hearts. All of this junk prevents us from being true followers of Christ. They culminate in preventing us serving our fellow Christians and being a witness to those in darkness. Jesus said in Mark 10:45, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.”
If we are followers of Jesus, we should not hold on to all this emotional junk. Just as hoarding material possessions can fill spaces in our home, spiritual junk can fill our hearts until others can no longer see the love of Christ. “The lamp of the body is the eye. If, therefore, your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If, therefore, the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matt 6:22)
What kind of junk is in your trunk?