Spring Cleaning

No matter how tidy we try to be the other three seasons, every house needs a good spring cleaning.  So does every heart, and Holy Week is a great time to start. Jesus set the example with His cleansing of the Temple, and since His Spirit now dwells in our souls, we would do well to follow suit. 

The dirt and grime in need of scouring that Monday in Jerusalem were the merchants who had turned the Temple into a marketplace for goods instead of a meeting place with God. It wasn’t that selling doves and lambs was wrong.  Worshipers from far away couldn’t bring livestock in their luggage, so sacrifices were sold in the city for convenience. Foreign currency was exchanged for local cash, and visitors purchased the required offerings.  The transactions weren’t the issue.  Where and how they were taking place were the problems.  Instead of swapping money and selling wares outside the temple courts, the hawkers had set up shop inside the gates and were profiting from unjust prices and inflated rates.  They were taking up space reserved for focus on God, and they needed to go.  

Without hesitation or reservation, Jesus flipped their tables and flushed them out.  He drove them away from the temple area and “would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts”(Mk 13:16).  And the whole time, He was talking.  “As he taught them, he said, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.’ But you have made it a den of thieves”(Mk 11:17).

As we consider a housecleaning of the heart, that’s where we start—with a hard and honest look at the things we’ve allowed to creep inside God’s current temple.  All the space of our lives is reserved for focus on God.  “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.” “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.”  There’s nothing about us—head to toe and every inch in between—that isn’t His. What we think, what we watch, what we listen to, what we say, what we feel, what we love, what we do, and where we go should all honor and glorify God. 

The daily grind can cause grunge and grime to build up little layers at a time, and we need to remember that the same grace that washed us clean will rinse us off. Again and again and again.  Because of confidence in that grace, we can pray, “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Without hesitation or reservation, flip over and flush out anything and everything that isn’t from You and for You.  Forgive my faults and failures, and may I live this moment making much of You.”

No matter the season, don’t dread the deep clean.

God’s scrubbings are always for our good.