The weekend is here, and Saturday is often used to complete the honey-do lists. Since it is Spring, that list can be quite extensive! Painting, mulching, gardening, and mowing are just a few of the time-consuming projects at the top of our lists. Today might be the day to do some Spring cleaning. And this is when the strength of the bond of marriage is put to the test!
Today has been designated as National Pack Rat Day. If you have the tendency to be a pack rat, cleaning closets and drawers with your spouse is going to be, shall we say, challenging! That’s especially true if one spouse is a pack rat and the other spouse has little or no sentimental attachment to anything. Pack rats, you’d better tie a rope around your foot so that you don’t get thrown out, too!
According to Merriam-Webster, the term pack rat was first applied to people in 1885. We – um, I mean pack rats – are named after “a bushy-tailed rodent of western North America that stores food and loose objects.”1 The little critters keep little pieces of anything they might find, believing it would be of use at some time in the future.
My dad was a bit of a pack rat, but it involved specific things. One building, a small shed, was stacked top to bottom and side to side with scrap pieces of wood that he was certain he would need and use some day. I watched a lot of scraps get carried into that building but very few ever left. After dad passed, all that wood was taken away by someone else – including the building!
He also kept every woodworking magazine he had purchased. Each magazine had an article, a project, a tool, or a different way to do something. Again, they pointed to future projects of which 99.9% never happened. Those magazines are still in drawers in dad’s shop.
I confess that I have a bit of that in me. I still have some toys from when I was a kid, collections of small rubber balls, trinkets, and oddities that meant something to me when I was 10. They are still in near perfect condition. Why would I want to throw them away?!?
My wife and I have been downsizing, cleaning closets and whittling down stuff that has
accumulated over almost 38 years of marriage. Guess who’s doing most of the throwing away? Many times during the process, I’ve uttered the words, “I forgot I had that!” Now, if I had forgotten that I had it, why do I still need it? That’s logical thinking. Pack rats, though, are not logical. Our response is, “Well, now that I know I have it, I might need it sometime.”
Kindly, my wife has offered to do the cleaning when I’m not home. Nay nay, I say, nay nay!!! I must be there as the protector of the past, the connoisseur of the collections, and the redeemer of the relics. This is why we can only do a closet per day with several days of recuperation in between.
As I was thinking about the spiritual application of this story, the Lord brought Hebrews 12:1 to mind. “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.” Often, I’ve mentioned in sermons and devotionals that if we are going to get tripped up by a particular sin, typically there is one that rises to the top. That is our besetting sin.
However, we are first told to lay aside “every weight.” The Enduring Word Commentary says, “Sin can hold us back. But there are also things that may not be sin (every weight) but are merely hindrances that can keep us from running effectively the race God has for us. Our choices are not always between right and wrong, but between something that may hinder us and something else that may not. Is there a weight in your life you must lay aside?”2
Paul seems to have this concept in mind when he wrote 1 Corinthians 10:23. “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.”
Even good things can become a hindrance in our walk with the Lord. Just as the pack rat stores away an assortment of odds and ends, thinking they will be beneficial in the future, the Christian can collect all sorts of weights in their life that eventually slows them down in their walk with the Lord. As Christians, it would do us all a lot of good to unclutter our lives, sifting through our busy collections and getting rid of the things we just don’t need.
Will it be painful? Most likely. But in the long run, we will be glad we did. Paul wanted his life controlled only by the Lord, not the stuff of life and this world. Let’s make 1 Corinthians 6:12 a motivational verse to get us to clean out the closets of our lives. “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.”
1https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pack%20rat
2Enduring Word Commentary, e-Sword.net module.
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