We discovered there: one broken golf cart, a set of old curtains, an Easter egg tree with three cartons of crushed eggshell ornaments; assorted cardboard boxes mostly empty; two old pictures—one painted by a great-uncle in 1906; stray books, magazines, and newspapers; one winter coat and a pair of blue jeans; a down jacket “lost” at school; a plastic della Robbia wreath with most of the fruit missing; a box of used and faded Christmas candles; six glass punch cups of unknown origin; one battered air hockey game; and other lost treasures carefully uncovered but already forgotten.

It was my family’s yearly pilgrimage into the yawning disorder of the third-floor storage room. Undertaken on the fourth of July each year, the journey had about it a kind of patriotic fervor fueled by the knowledge that during hot summer days instantaneous combustion is a distinct possibility! I am of the opinion that most storage rooms breed their own debris, but considerable help was given to ours by an unfailing adherence to the admonition of Jesus “that nothing be lost!”

After a good deal of discussion and some hard work, our battle of the bulge produced three brimming cardboard boxes and two large plastic bags of trash. We then shut the door to lend modesty to the inevitable reproductive cycle of family storage rooms. Clearly, the struggle was not over, simply recessed until some later date. 

I suspect all of us have internal storage rooms that might do well with periodic sorting and cleaning. Certainly that is true in terms of the outmoded and excess religious baggage we often carry with us. For example, I was well into my thirties before I realized that Jesus did not possess the blue eyes and golden-brown hair of my Sunday School pictures. And I confess that I am still working on the fact that God loves me just as I am. You see, my angry God of judgement is in part still safely stored away. Such internal storage rooms need to be opened and aired, because to grow in faith one must be willing to examine and discard those images and ideas which once may have comforted but now only confine. 

I certainly hope your fourth of July was more interesting and enjoyable than closet cleaning, but do take time this summer to do a bit of inventory. Perhaps you’ve been carrying around a few seemingly gems from the past that need to be forgotten!