by Marc Hays
This morning I woke up with a plan. I was going to come downstairs, put the coffee on, come into my office and clean it before I did anything else. No Facebook. No Blog and Mablog. No email. No phones, no pools, no pets. The state of disarray in my office had gotten awful. There were papers that needed to be sorted; many more papers that needed to be trashed; books that needed to be reshelved; drawings from the children that needed a museum to house them. And that was just my desk.
As it became cleaner, I noticed that the contrast between my now-clean-desk and the floor and tables around it was becoming starker. There were papers stacked everywhere! More books underneath them, and still more drawings from the kids. My entire office was atrocious, and until one part was clean, I didn’t notice the rest being in such disarray.
Recently, a friend called me and confessed a sin to me that I might pray for him throughout the day. It was a sin in his mind. He hadn’t acted on it yet- not with his eyes, his mouth, his hands, or his feet, but he knew where his heart was, and he knew this thought was a work of the flesh. He knew that man cannot take fire into his lap and not be burned. He knew that these types of thoughts spread like wild fire until there is no controlling them. He also knew that these types of thoughts wasted the life and breath that God had given him, and he didn’t want to waste those things. His heart was soft and humble and wise.
My office, being a negative example, and my friend’s confession, being a positive example, remind me of the same thing: If you clean up as you go, the mess never spreads.<>
