Keep the room clean.
Move to a new place for a little reprieve. Fresh sheets, fresh floor, fresh deskspace. It's all been polished and dusted and vacuumed and disinfected and now it's yours.
It's fleeting, though. For a while it smells clean and it's neat and it's tidy.
And then you arrive. Success for a little bit, but it's rather effortless if we're being perfectly honest. It's easy to keep things in order when they start that way.
But the slip will come. So slowly that you'll allow it. First a shirt you plan to wear again on the chair by your bed. Then a couple papers on the desk. You'll get to them soon, so it's ok. You're in a hurry his morning, so a cursory flattening of the sheets will do; not military precision bed-making, but it will do for today.
Laundry's out of the dryer but you're so tired that you might as well do it in the morning because you're kind of tired.
Then one day you get home in the afternoon and realize there's what you would call a Miniature Mess. But you can handle this. It's only miniature, so no worries. Now is not the time for real concern.
Then it happens. A really bad night. A good one for you, but not for the room. You get home from hours at the one pub and then the other pub. Tear in the doorway, of course, because there's no other way to do it. But once you're in, your lost for a sec. The room spins a bit, but you correct. Then it spins again.
Survival Mode. Water. Bed. Rush to the sink and fill the glass. gulpgulpgulp. Another! gulpgulpgulp.
Alright, now you're good. You brush your teeth but who really remembers to rinse out the sink in Survival Mode?
You stumble toward the bed, each step a little lighter as an article of clothing soars to a different part of the room. Coat to the chair; shoes at the closet; shirt to your left, pants to your right. And you sink into the cotton and the bedsprings like a cherub on a cloud.
Wake. Oh no. This has now graduated to a bonafide Mess. But you're in a hurry, of course, and the headache is the real crisis. Is that mud you tracked in? Ignore it. You shovel the clothes to a pile in the corner. You'll permit a small pile there, because you can't see it from the doorway.
By tomorrow, another pile gains real estate behind the bed under the same pretense. This is getting out of hand, don't you think?
"I'll get to it soon," you say, and that's nice enough for now. Meanwhile that mirror is getting disgusting.
Right about then is when the smell sets in. No problem, you open a window. "I need to really get to this." But not now. Now, of course, it is time for a nap. Have you really not washed the sheets since you moved in? Your nose can tell.
In the morning you step on a pen and the pain wakes you up.
It's time. You shovel all the clothes into the hamper. Don't matter if it's clean or dirty; cut down the weeds with the wheat and sort em later. Put the sheets in there too. This aught to be two loads.
Grab a paper towel and scrub the mirror. These books can go back on the shelf. These papers can be thrown away. Now, I wonder where they keep the bathroom in this place. Finishing touch: shoes all in line in the closet.
But once a mess is made, it knows how to be remade. It makes short work. You just cleaned, right? So why be overthetop stickler about putting away that shirt that you want to wear tomorrow?
In a week, your lack of diligence brings you right back to the Mess.
Yah, this is all about sin. The whole thing. Allegory, every bit of it.
A guess a good Christian should favor the term "parable".
Once, my little sister and I had pow-wow in her room. We decided that the cleanliness of our room is an excellent barometer for our spiritual lives. When you assent to disarray, you've probably already done so Inside.
Well, today is a room clean day.
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