Clean rooms, clean hearts, and the fear of loving

I've been cleaning and rearranging my room for the last two weeks. It's hard to finish something when you have so little time to dedicate to it, and when a job is as big as the job that I'm doing, then it takes time.

Time...

Cleaning our hearts takes time and assistance. We can't do it alone - too many hard to reach places and dark corners, not to mention the occasional ball of filth that seems to attack us when we try to sweep it up.

So often I see God as someone who gets annoyed at my "failures" and sins. I wonder if I saw him like my closest friend, how that would change my perspective. For example: I prefer if someone comes to me when they are angry. I hate the silent treatment, but so often that is what we do to God. We are ashamed or something and we stop talking to him. Instead God says, "I long for you. Talk to me. Tell me about your anger, pain, sorrow, whatever." The problem is that we blame him for these things because he is God after all and could prevent badness from happening, but he doesn't. Instead he walks the road of suffering with us and asks, "Do you trust me?"

Trust...

How can he expect me to trust when I have been so deeply wounded? How can he ask for faith when pain rushes in like a flood, drowning the faint memory of joy?

I was talking to a friend today about her own sorrows and it got me thinking. I try to be honest with God about my anger as well as my joy. In a given day I may rant and then trust. Some days are better than others. Yesterday morning was hard, but then it got better. Anyway, I digress.

Why are we terrified of love? Why do we push away the very things we long for? Why are people afraid of each other?

Wounds. Pain. Fear.

I've been thinking a lot about my own fears regarding love, friendship, and faith. This book I am reading talks about how women are afraid that they are too much and not enough. We are afraid that we are irrelevant. That we will open our hearts and others will trample through them.

The greatest return demands the greatest risk. That's true in investing with money, I bet it's true with investing in our hearts.

Investing...

I've noticed that in the midst of the small groups movement, there doesn't seem to be an emphasis on "charity" which is love in action. Why don't small groups focus around serving others. The way love works is that as you invest it into others, you have greater return. If you hold on to it doesn't increase, sometimes it decreases.

Risk...

God is teaching me about risk and has been for several years now. A heart with no pretense. A heart that is free to love. A heart that doesn't judge. A heart that is filled with his beauty. That is what I would love to have. May I take the risks needed to reach those goals.