cleaning out the junk. Floating on grace.

In one week’s time, me and all of my roommates decided to move out by January. We have begun cleaning out shelves and drawers, preparing for change. As I attempted to tackle my closet, clothes began accumulating all over my bedroom floor. I would stop and critique each piece of clothing and make a decision. Standing there debating the fate of a sweater, I felt the Holy Spirit speak so clearly. My closet isn’t the only thing in need of some serious purging…

Some parts of our lives we can tend to look at and put up with. Sometimes there are things we are meant to let go of, but choose to hold on to for “sentimental value.” So instead of having extra space for something new, we let the old stuff dominate our closet. We refuse to throw it away. We try it on and begin to rationalize why we should keep it. And so we buy more hangers, and attempt to stuff each rack beyond its capacity. If we hoard things in our life the way we hoard things in our closets, we are missing out on something great.

Holding on to sin or past mistakes for the sake of "sentimental value" only holds us back from what God wants to do in us NOW.

I felt so free as I tossed each article of clothing out of my closet, as if somehow I gained back my sensibility. I always feel so refreshed when I get rid of junk. Yet when it comes to matters of the heart, we don't toss things out so easily. It is normally more of a tug-of-war. But needless to say, it's always worth making the choice to toss it. And as we let go... chains fall. Our burdens become lighter as we cast them on Christ. Today, I feel so light, I could fly. He is so capable of taking it all.

Every morning now as I walk in to my less cluttered closet, I want to be reminded to allow Jesus to pull the old junk out of this heart of mine.

We need Him. He's the only thing that makes us clean.

I want to live like this... divinely in love.

From the day of her deliverance, she did not ask, she simply became part of his band of followers. Wherever he went, she went, and poured out her whole love and her whole life on him.

In the earliest hours of the morning she could be found preparing his breakfast. When he sat down to teach, she was there, at his feet. When he departed, she departed with him. She washed his feet, served his meals, cared for his clothes, placed fruit beside his bed in the evenings. He who said of himself, "I am the living water," always had cool water to drink--brought by her hands. In the hot, blistering sun of summer, she walked with his band of followers, village to village, city to city--always following him.

...why such devotion?

Because she adored him. Fervently, singlemindedly, she loved him. She was totally enamored, completely enraptured, and utterly in love with her Lord and Master. She did not care who knew it. She was embarrassingly unembarrassed about the matter.

Others eventually grew used to the sight of her single-minded adoration and her unhibited outpouring of affection, which continued unceasingly from ealirliest dawn to the last light of night.

The most amazing thing of all was this: He responded. He poured out love in return. It seemed a little odd, the Son of God, caring, affectionate, loving, and returning love...so profoundly, so totally. That God might love, with such ardor, was simply something that had never occurred to them.

This simple girl was unfolding the highest order of the universe. To love her God. For though she expressed her love in service and care, she expressed her love yet more in eyes, in heart, in soul, and in the fervor and passion of her whole being. No abstraction, this love. An unnerving thing this. Unwavering, steadfast, day after day, with total abandon--loving him. You saw it in her eyes, in her kneeling, in moments of praise and rejoicing, and when she looked into his face.

Divine Romance. Gene Edwards.