Heart Thoughts from Helen

" DeClutter Your Life", or some such article grabbed my attention this morning. There it sat half hidden, scattered amongst periodicals such as GUIDEPOSTS, TURNING POINT DAILY DEVOTIONAL GUIDE, WHISPERS OF HIS POWER (Amy Carmichael), Corrie ten Boom's, I STAND AT THE DOOR AND KNOCK, and last but not least, READER'S DIGEST. I laughed out loud (or I think the cyber saying is LOL). Underneath all this literary load, rolled up towels encircle the big basket that sits next to the tub. You guessed it! It's the 'reading room'. At times, it's the only quiet, private place around.

Many years ago in our coaching era when we lived in Woodruff with our two little boys, we hosted a Sunday School 'fellowship' at our old country home. Now, this old house is a story in itself, but that's for another heart thought. A dear friend arrived early and I eagerly asked her if she noticed anything different. We had opened up some of the old previously unused rooms in the house to accommodate our growing class. She glanced around and eventually remarked:"Oh, you cleaned up". I laughed then and I chuckle now thinking about it. With two little boys it was quite the task to keep the old barn like house decent and being the not so neat freak, it was indeed a joke for our house to be 'company ready'.

It's January when all thoughts turn to de-cluttering the premises. Just glance in any store noticing all the organizational helps available. Myself, I'm a pack-rat. They say the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree; my ninety-three year old mother still loves her 'stuff' surrounding her. Dennis is... well, not so much a pack rat but not exactly Mr. Clean either. That usually leads to quite a few discussions at our house as you may well imagine. I'm not sure who wins those deliberations and at times we get rather heated on the subject. To tell the truth, I don't like clutter, but neither do I like to throw things away that I might need at a later date. I like things nice and tidy and clean, but seldom do they end up that way. I can always find more interesting things to do with my time than clean house.

Saturday, as Dennis searched through a box in our garage for a three ring binder for me, he found several and was going to chunk the whole contents of two of them. I flipped through one and found a wonderful wealth of information from a 1987 Billy Graham School of Evangelism conference. We settled on saving part of one and throwing away the other.

Josiah, of 2 Kings in the Old Testament Scripture " did what was right in the sight of the Lord "(2 Kings 22:2) This boy, crowned king at age eight accomplished many things during his reign in Jerusalem. One such significant accomplishment included having the temple decluttered. Lo and behold the Book of the Law surfaced in the midst of the mess. Imagine that! The Word of God found in the House of God. The beauty of this story is that Josiah called all his heads of state together and read God's Word in their hearing. He renewed the covenant of the Lord and all the people pledged to do likewise.

I wonder what I'll discover in all my disorder.

Just think how the Lord blessed Josiah when he found the Book and read the Book and shared the Word from The Book with the people. "Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the Lord"(2 Kings 22:19)...God spared Josiah the grief of seeing His judgment on the people.

To declutter or not to declutter; that is the question. Of course, compromise calms many ruffled feathers in most nests this time of year. Compromising the Word of God however, just won't fly.