Cleaning Away The Cobwebs
It’s early March and the evenings are still too chilly for me, even in San Diego. Since I’ve committed to staying inside in the evening until the weather warms up, it seems like a good time to start spring cleaning.
My mother grew up during the depression so she resisted throwing anything away. Her kitchen cupboards were full of empty jars (peanut butter, mayonnaise, any jar you can imagine), every dish and pan that she ever owned and countless plastic bags of every type and size. Her closets were full of old clothes, boxes of magazines and trunks of leftover fabric and yarn from sewing and knitting projects. You get the picture! I’m much better at getting rid of ‘junk;’ at least, that’s what I thought until I began to clean my own clutter.
Coming face-to-face with all of my packed-away boxes is overwhelming! I start the day tackling the storage boxes in the garage. The first box I open is filled with memories of my school years. Among other things, buried in that box are my 5th grade spelling notebook, report cards and kiddy valentines from fellow students. Who is Christie* who promised to be my best friend forever and why do I still have valentines from grade school?
The second box I open is filled with greeting cards. An afternoon is lost as I can’t stop myself from reading each one of them. In a letter dated forty years ago, Patsy*, from college, said that she’d be grateful to me forever for sharing my faith with her and changing her life. No matter how much I search my memory, I’m saddened by the fact that I have no recollection of her.
On my second day of sorting, I open the attic and my heart is filled with love. Here are treasures that I stored carefully away over the years. There are crib mobiles and clothes for my two children and bins full of toys, from Barbie dolls and Ninja turtles to cupcake dolls, beanie babies and toy trucks. Dare I mention that both of my ‘kids’ are in their mid-thirties?
Why do I, and so many of us, hold on to so much ‘stuff’? I Corinthians 13:11 tells us that,
“When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.”
Why haven’t I put away childish things? Slowly, I sort through box after box, stirring memories that will remain with me, even without these physical reminders. It is time for me to let go of much of this ‘stuff’ that I cherished in the past. I almost shudder as I wonder if I love that old rocking chair so much that it has become an idol.
I realize that my spirit, with its own cobwebs, is in need of a cleaning too. We baby boomers tend to tightly cling to the ‘good old days,’ frequently resisting change, including change for the better. It becomes a problem in our lives, in our communities and especially in our churches when we hold so tightly to the past that we can’t turn around and see the glorious opportunities of the future. The gospel is still the gospel but baby boomers like me need to meet millennials and Gen-Zers where they are. Baby boomers and Generation-X are responsible for passing on the essentials of the faith to the next generations. We need to be students of the questions they are asking, and of the challenges to belief that they are facing (see https://legacy.cmalliance.org/alife/engaging-gen-z/.) As hard as it may be for those of us in the ‘older generation,’ we must learn from the past and also embrace changes needed to reach the next generations. The message of the unchanging Word of God by an unchanging God is transformational, and transformation means change.
Praise God that in spite of the strengths and weaknesses of any generation or any person, we can rest assured that ‘the gates of hell shall not prevail against’ His church (Matthew 16:18). Our passion, regardless of who we are and which generation we belong to, must be the great commission that we are tasked with,
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19)
