Life is a messy process, literally. There is always something to put in the washing machine. A new tranche of mail arrives every day. I have no idea where all the dust comes from, but occasionally someone in the house will sweep it or suck it up into a vacuum. The dishes are never done. If they are, I immediately feel the need for a drink of water and leave the glass in the sink. Maybe it makes me feel better because the kitchen is still clean, but there is a sign of life.
One of the most valuable tools available to manage this messy process is routine. Without routines, we expend so much energy on the things that must get done (or they will overwhelm us) that we lose focus. Messes keep coming every day; they constantly need to be controlled.
Life offers us much more than laundry, dust, and dishes. There is illness, aging, misunderstandings. There are people who do not pull their weight because they either won’t or can’t. There are people oblivious to the trouble their behavior causes others. That includes all of us at some level. Messes just keep coming at us — sometimes more, sometimes less — and they never stop.
The principles that help us manage the laundry, the dust, and the dishes are the same ones that help us manage other parts of our life as well. For example, imagine that every time the laundry needed to be done, we had to go buy soap. Or imagine having to get up dust without the use of a broom or vacuum. We naturally understand that to deal with the physical messes of life we need the proper equipment. We (usually) don’t wait until we have piles of messes because we know they are coming. We get things together ahead of time so that the expected does not turn into a crisis.
The same is true of life in general. There are things that we know are going to happen and we have time to prepare for them. Doing this will help us to manage those times when the unexpected happens or something breaks. Understanding aging and life transitions, and then preparing for them, makes those times less stressful.
It is good to keep our lives as full of other people as we can manage. Being in a community is good for us; we learn a lot from each other. We accomplish so much more together than alone. But it is also like having a house full of family or guests. The things that need to be cleaned seem to go up exponentially. It is both energizing and exhausting at the same time.
Routines and proper tools are vital. This is the reason we have set meeting times. Our regular gathering times at churches and homes and civic organizations help set our weekly routines. They are predictable and built into our lives. They are some of the mundane tools we use to keep our lives in order.
We also have spiritual tools. These are the durable items that help us keep life in perspective. In the New Testament the imagery of housekeeping may come to mind with the word “cleansed.” In II Peter 1:5-9, the apostle encourages us by writing, “Make every effort to add to your faith goodness, and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. If you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.” (NIV).
It takes effort to add these things to our lives. But, it also takes effort to go to the store or keep the house livable. We take care of what is important to us by using routines. The same is true spiritually. We need spiritual routines in our lives to build strength and stamina. We need them to manage the daily messes that life offers to us. All the qualities Peter offers to us will have the effect of cleaning things up before they become unmanageable. They will keep us focused and grounded on the important things, preventing a piling up of daily messes. We keep moving. The dishes are never done.
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