October 29, 2017

I hate sweeping more than any other chore. It’s time-consuming, obnoxious, and when you live beneath a colony of pine trees, utterly futile, especially in autumn. I let the pine needles collect on my deck for far too long, before resigning myself to three minutes of the most half-hearted attempt at sweeping ever conducted by a member of the human race, and I do so knowing I will have to do this again days later. So why do I bother? Well, aside from having been raised to respect property, I sweep because eventually (meaning, like, tomorrow) it will start to rain, and it will keep raining, and the pine needles will keep falling, and they will band together in villages, beneath which mildew will grow and turn my deck into a slimy, putrid mess. I sometimes wonder if this is what happens when we harden our hearts, when pieces of the world fall upon us, and keep falling, and we let those pieces collect and band together, beneath which bitterness and resignation begin to grow, turning our hearts festering and fearful. And maybe it’s easier—and at times, even seems to make more sense—to give way to the ferment instead of daily repeating the act of coming to Jesus to let Him sweep away the fear and the worry, all the doubts we talk ourselves into believing are inevitable, and maybe they are. But Jesus always has a broom, and it’s been my experience that He is far more willing to sweep than I am. Often, I’m the one lying prostrate beneath the weight of it all, staring blankly into the sky, acting like no such thing as a broom had ever been invented, or like I don’t have a God who is longing to brush the fallen things of this world from my heart.