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Today's meditation
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Vertical or horizontal
1 Corinthians 3:16-23: Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
I found great comfort in reading an opinion recently which said that “clutter is horizontal, but hoarding is vertical.” I generally live and work in cluttered spaces, and “clutter” sounds far less judgmental and worrisome than does “hoarding.”
But clutter—whether it is in the house or in the heart—can keep us from being and doing our best. Things get in the way, physically and spiritually. And no matter how well we adjust to work around the clutter, it is still an obstacle. Whatever we name it, we’d be better without it.
When I read Paul’s words about each of us being “God’s temple” with “God’s Spirit [dwelling] in” us, I think of the challenge of clutter. What do I allow to stay in the way, in my physical life, my spiritual life, my emotional life? What complications have taken up residence in my soul, preventing my having full communion with God and with other people?
It is sobering and exhilarating to think that my body is a temple of God, that my life is a dwelling place for the God who created it and the rest of the universe. So my house—physical, spiritual, and emotional—is a house where God chooses to dwell.
But sometimes I can’t find God for all the clutter in the way.
Psalm 69:1-23; 31-38; 2 Kings 1:2-17; Matthew 5:11-16
Copyright 2023 by Carol Mead. For noncommercial use and sharing only. For more information on this ministry, and on a free subscription to these meditations, please contact the author by email (thenewmead@yahoo.com).
I found great comfort in reading an opinion recently which said that “clutter is horizontal, but hoarding is vertical.” I generally live and work in cluttered spaces, and “clutter” sounds far less judgmental and worrisome than does “hoarding.”
But clutter—whether it is in the house or in the heart—can keep us from being and doing our best. Things get in the way, physically and spiritually. And no matter how well we adjust to work around the clutter, it is still an obstacle. Whatever we name it, we’d be better without it.
When I read Paul’s words about each of us being “God’s temple” with “God’s Spirit [dwelling] in” us, I think of the challenge of clutter. What do I allow to stay in the way, in my physical life, my spiritual life, my emotional life? What complications have taken up residence in my soul, preventing my having full communion with God and with other people?
It is sobering and exhilarating to think that my body is a temple of God, that my life is a dwelling place for the God who created it and the rest of the universe. So my house—physical, spiritual, and emotional—is a house where God chooses to dwell.
But sometimes I can’t find God for all the clutter in the way.
Psalm 69:1-23; 31-38; 2 Kings 1:2-17; Matthew 5:11-16
Copyright 2023 by Carol Mead. For noncommercial use and sharing only. For more information on this ministry, and on a free subscription to these meditations, please contact the author by email (thenewmead@yahoo.com).