The Junk Room

Do you have a ‘junk room’?

Most people have a place in their house where all the junk is stored. For some it’s a room, for some it’s the attic and for others it’s the garage or a shed. Some people have a whole house that’s full of clutter.

There are decluttering experts who tell us how to remove the clutter and TV segments and shows dedicated to decluttering.

How do you feel when you walk into a cluttered room?

A lot of people say that walking into a cluttered space makes them feel anxious. I totally get that. I need space around me and so while I’m OK to go in and out of a junk room to get what I need, I don’t want to live in there.

I wonder if we realise that our minds are becoming full of clutter. We’re facing a growing problem of cluttered minds.

Our minds are becoming the ‘junk room’ of our bodies.

It used to be that if we wanted to find out what’s happening in the world we’d sit down with a cuppa and the newspaper or watch a half hour news bulletin on telly in the evening. If we wanted to stay up to date with a breaking story we’d listen to the radio and get the details in the hourly news bulletin. These days we have 24 hour news online, on television and on radio.

We have a constant stream of information from all over the world coming at us at a hundred kilometres an hour. On top of that we know what all of our friends are doing every moment thanks to social media. Of course it’s not only our friends but millions of others we’ve never met.

Our minds have become the junk room. They’re so full of stuff that other people are throwing in there that we haven’t got time to think through the important issues in our lives. We swing from one drama to the next.

I wonder if we can do just what we do at home. We have a junk room where everything goes that doesn’t have a place but we try to keep our lounge room a bit more ordered. We only put stuff in the lounge room that’s meant to be there. Our lounge room is ‘on purpose’.

Maybe we need to make room in our busy schedules to regularly disconnect from the junk room. It’ll mean putting our phones and all the other things that keep us filling up on junk out of reach and being intentional about what goes into our minds.

Most of the time we can’t help spending time in the junk room so we need to be intentional about creating a space where we decide what we’re thinking about.

I love what the Bible has to say in Proverbs about setting our minds on the things that matter.

“Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts.”

If that’s the case, we need to make time to take back control of our thought life. If our thought life is totally given over to the urgent, rather than the important, we won’t have time to see the bigger picture.

Many of us are able to quote a particular phrase from Psalm 46. “Be still and know that I am God.” The rest of the Psalm gives some more context. It talks about being still and getting to know that God is in control despite the craziness that’s happening around us. Maybe you can start decluttering your thoughts and your mind by spending some time contemplating that Psalm.

Psalm 46 (ESV)

1 God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah

4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
5 God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.
6 The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
7 The LORD of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah

8 Come, behold the works of the LORD,
how he has brought desolations on the earth.
9 He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the chariots with fire.
10 “Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!”
11 The LORD of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah

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