Whenever I visit, she shows me a room…

A room she is working on.

Today I can barely get in the room…

I force open the door …

“What happened?” I ask…

“Well,” she replies, “I decided to clean out the closets….”

“So I took everything out and dusted the shelves and cleaned the closet floors.”

“Now I have to put everything back.”

“I’ll get up early some morning and start on it.”

She closes the door to the room and we walk away.

Every time I visit her house, one more door is closed…

There will never be an early morning when she puts things back in place.

Just as there has never been such a day for her bedroom…

Or the guest room…

Or the dining room.

One by one she empties the closets and the drawers in each room of her house…

Closets and drawers filled with things she has put there over the years…

Things she has forgotten…

Things hidden from plain sight.

One by one she piles them in the center of the room…

Then overwhelmed by what she has found…

She closes the door to the room and hides them again…

Shrinking her house with each closed door…

So it is with souls…

One by one we accumulate things we would rather forget…

Hiding them in the dark corners and deep drawers of our soul…

Until God lets us look at our souls through His eyes…

And seeing the mess we have hidden…

 We stand dumbfounded…

Looking at a task we know we cannot complete.

Knowing our souls are filled with debris that can only be emptied by God …

In resignation, we turn away…

Forgetting that God stands ready to remove our sin…

as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.  Psalm 103:12

Stands ready to forgive us…

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  1 John 1:9

Waits like a loving Father to welcome us home…

…“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. Luke 15:20