I learned yesterday that there is a new series of “Sort your Life Out” with Stacey Solomon. There was great excitement in my house! OK, to be honest I was the only person who was in the slightest bit bothered but I was able to share my delight with my sister in West Oxfordshire.
“Sort your life out” is a programme that goes into people's houses who are struggling for space because of the amount of ‘stuff’ that they have. The entire contents of the house is packed up and then laid out on the floor of a warehouse so that people can see just how much they have (125 pairs of women's shoes, 17 tubes of toothpaste, 14 hair straighteners). Families are then encouraged to reduce how much they have by 1/3 or 1/2 to enable their belongings to fit in their house better.
Whilst this is going on a team of people is at the house cleaning and creating systems for storage and organisation. I love this programme in part because I love things being tidy and sorted! But there is also a real tenderness and understanding of the families, their situations and a commitment to help.
It leads me to wonder what clutter we have in our own lives? Not literal ‘stuff’ but what gems do we have hidden away - gifts and skills maybe that are valuable and important yet have gone unused for years. What memories have we allowed to be buried - memories of good times, memories with significant people, difficult memories perhaps that we never quite dealt with. And what grudges and unforgiveness are we holding onto, allowing them to take up precious space in our lives and spoil day-to-day existence.
I wonder whether we can trust the tenderness and understanding of God with all of these things that clutter up our lives. Can we trust God with our gifts and skills, knowledge and wisdom that we have hidden; can we let go of grudges and unforgiveness; can we share with him memories we have – both precious and difficult? I pray that we can trust God to deal gently with our ‘stuff’ so that our lives may be happier, freer and more ‘sorted’. Amen
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