clutter

A strange psychology comes into play at the end of the year. At least it does with me.

An irresistable urge to tidy things up, clean things out, and get things back to how they were always meant to be.

Like my desk. My office. What passes for my 'in tray'. My accounts. That sort of thing. A kind of good, old-fashioned, out-of-season 'spring clean'.

[This isn't a photo of my desk, by the way!]

I accumulate through the year an awful lot of 'stuff'.

Things that I think will maybe be important at a later date. Mail that I think I'll maybe respond to at a more convenient time.

But it doesn't turn out that way. And it all piles up.

Neat little piles. All over the place. But the makings of a mess.

Thankfully I didn't come across any unpaid bills, or stuff like that. Things which I should have replied to a few months back. Nor did I find that I was in the red. Not quite.

It was sobering, nonetheless, to see how easy it is for all sorts of 'stuff' to take up a permanent residence and almost begin to monopolise the rather spacious office that I have.

A bit like church, I began to think. With all sorts of 'stuff' (in terms of things we do and what goes on) which once maybe served a purpose (or we thought they might) and we just kind of kept them on.

Until the whole thing's rather cluttered and a million miles from where it started off.

Sometimes there's a need to tidy the whole thing up. Get back to how the thing is meant to be and was at the start. Remove a whole load of 'stuff' which is simply now getting in the way.

I think there's maybe a sort of 'New Year's Eve' mentality in all that's going on within God's church these days. A big and major clear-out. A radical sort of tidy up.

* * *

Not that that was all I've been doing these days! Far from it.

There's been a lot of preparation and a good few folk to be seen.

I was in at the hospital again this afternoon seeing a number of folk. The last of the people I was in to see was in a ward with three other ladies. So I stopped and spoke with them as well.

They didn't guess to start with who I was. I think they thought I was a doctor or something.

But once they discovered I was a minister it turned into a rapid round of 'Any Questions'. What did I think of 'gay marriages'? Were there such things, in any case? What about mixed marriages between Protestants and Catholics? And what about euthanasia while we're at it?

The whole caboodle. Every question you've ever wanted to ask your local minister but haven't had the chance to raise. And all sorts of pains and hurts and sorrows there as well. They all came out.

Daughters who had died from strange diseases while still relatively young. Husbands who were a bit of a pain themselves.

Life's not easy. And it crossed my mind that that was a good deal closer to 'church' for that little group of ladies than the buildings and the services which commonly pass for 'church'.

So the New Year could just see us getting back a bit more to the 'old'.

The simpler, far less cluttered sort of living as the followers of Christ which JEsus himself surely wants.