Boxes

This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! 2 Corinthians 5:17

Sitting on my back deck, shaving our dog earlier this week, I saw them coming. Swarms of mosquitoes. Those annoying insects adore me, and I hate them. I'm thinking of getting a twenty foot pole and a bat house just to be free of those pesky bugs. Itchy, itchy bites, and it is only March.

Something else bit me this month as well: the spring fever bug. This bite has me itching to clean and organize. Categorize. Classify and group. Analyze and arrange. Then rearrange. Bring order to the chaos. Spring cleaning!

Once I get started, Sterilite and Rubbermaid are my middle names. I love boxes. Boxes on shelves, boxes in closets, boxes in the garage. Clothes in boxes, tools in boxes, medicine in boxes, even extra boxes in boxes. Boxes, boxes, boxes!

Boxes make me feel good. A place for everything, and all things in their place. What is even better than boxes are labels. Labels on my boxes, indicators of what is inside. Cataloging. Systemic regulation of our "stuff."

Ah, spring cleaning. My surroundings appear orderly and neat, giving me a sense of control and of peace. Now I can sit back and enjoy summer...until...until the pace of life picks up. Suddenly, flip flops of every color come flying out of the box and get kicked across the entryway while we rush in from the pool and out to the park. As we hop on our bikes, baseballs and mitts lay in the yard instead of returned to the neatly stenciled container in the garage. Warmer weather beckons us outside. Hence, mail piles up on the countertops; leftover school supplies get thrown in the bottom of the closet until August; and then there is that stray plastic egg, once containing chocolate, that fell behind the couch. How long will it sit on the coffee table waiting to find its home in the box in the basement marked EASTER?

Girlfriends, life is difficult to live out of boxes. When we are in relationships, engaging with one another, interacting and appreciating the things and people with which and with whom we are blessed, well, the lids fly off and out comes "the stuff"--the material stuff, the emotional stuff, and the stuff God wants us to either develop, share, or purge. And at the end of the day, everything does not always make it back into its box. Items get broken, borrowed, or buried. Exhausted, we choose one container to be a catch-all. Labels no longer fit the contents. Then there are those things too large to put in a tote. What do we do with them?

As much as I love boxes, they are not the total solution! And so it goes with our spiritual life as well. As enticing as it may be, God cannot be put into a box. His nature and His precepts cannot be compartmentalized and concisely labeled. God's essence is very complex. His vastness is beyond our comprehension. And having been created in His image, so are we! People want to label us, box us up, and put a lid on it!

I am presently studying the gifts of the Spirit and having a tough time with boxes and labels. Do I fit into the Teacher box, or the Leader box, or the Servant box, or maybe the Prophet box? Am I an encourager? Am I a giver? I am told to methodically analyze each gift in Romans 12, simply defined by Mr. Ingram, so that I can choose one major gift by which I will operate. The problem is I don't seem to fit in one box, and apparently neither do the other ten women in the group. That observation causes me to think that if we women do not want to be labeled and defined by one box, then certainly God our Creator does not either.

Girlfriends, I pray you will be bitten by the bug this spring. Find some pretty boxes and get cleaning, both your physical and your spiritual houses. But I also pray that you will live life out of the box. Allow God to dictate your sorting system. He is the ultimate organizer: just look around in nature! Be careful with labels; use them appropriately and be willing to change them as needed. And please do not waste days sitting around admiring your boxes--throw off the lids and actually use the contents to create memories and share your joy. Finally, I pray you will find peace with your system and at least for one day enjoy the clean, orderly, and refreshing state of your abode...until...life happens!