As most of you know, my wife and I love to spend time outside, especially in the spring. There are so many gardening tasks beckoning us. The last two weekends have not given us the opportunity to work outside because of the rain. I know we desperately need the rain, but it would be nice if it was timed differently.

Since we have been stuck inside, we decided to work on cleaning out the closets. I never knew how much stuff could fit in a closet. Actually, we worked on some storage containers, boxes, an old dresser, and the closets. We kept pulling stuff out and we tried to get rid of some stuff that had been accumulating for a number of years.

After the first weekend, we had several boxes and bags to take to the Nazareth Children's Home and several bags for the trash.

We made some great progress the first weekend, so when rain greeted us last weekend we decided to continue the process. While we entered the process with a positive attitude, we hit a brick wall when we discovered a box with pictures. Naturally, we had to stop and look at them. We found pictures from our entire married life. The memories were vivid and the emotions deeper than either of us imagined. Our lives together literally flashed before our eyes.

The next couple of boxes weren't much better because I found our wedding album and pictures from friends and family of our big day. I found the box of all the stuff we collected on our honeymoon. Progress continued to slow. Hoping the next box would get us going again, I dived in only to discover a box of my childhood pictures that my mother sent to us. Progress came to a grinding halt. Granted, it was good to get all the pictures together in better storage containers, but we didn't make near the progress that we accomplished the previous weekend.

Cleaning out the closets and organizing our stuff really got me to thinking about what kind of emotional and spiritual baggage we must all be carrying around.

I know we all have closets full of things that God never intended for us to carry around. We have past hurts, broken relationships, injustices, rejection, failure, sin, sin and more sin. We stuff this baggage deeper and deeper into the closets of our lives and hope that no one will ever open them or discover what is behind those doors.

The problem with that plan is when you ask God into your life he has this habit of looking behind closed doors. He wants to pull everything out, but we manage to push him away and close the door.

But God has the curiosity of a cat. He wants to peek in and see what we are so desperately trying to hide from him.

It's foolish to try and hide anything from God because he already knows what's behind those doors.

Not only does he know, but he wants to expose those areas so we can be healed. The hurts and rejection need God's healing touch. The injustices need to be surrendered to God for his justice before they grow roots of bitterness. Anger needs to be handed over before resentment starts to take root. The rubble of failure needs to be dumped in God's lap so he can help us rebuild successfully.

The hardest box to open to God's light is our sin.

The question I keep asking is why? He saw us, he knows what we did. Sadly, our sin separates us from God. All God wants is for us to repent, to really desire to turn away from sin's tempting delicacies. But we play dumb; we act as if the sin has no affect on our Christian walk. Honestly, the repented sin has no effect on our walk; it's the hidden, unrepented sin that chokes out our spiritual lives.

God wants to expose it, forgive us and restore us.

I want to encourage you to let God in the places of your heart that you have kept hidden from him. You know exactly what I am talking about. God wants to clean out your closets and restore order, your sense of self-worth, to rebuild your self-esteem and to heal those deep broken places in your heart. He offers you a breath of fresh air which includes peace and reconciliation.

So go ahead and open the door to God. Clean spiritual closets can be filled with joy, peace, love, comfort and restoration.

Doug Creamer teaches marketing at East Davidson High School. His Web site is www.dougcreamer.com.

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