Dusting

We don't dust for the purpose of collecting dust.

We dust for the purpose of removing the veil that prevents us from enjoying the beauty in life. We dust for the purpose of removing the detritus that builds up in our lives and becomes deleterious to our general health. We dust for the purpose of restoring our environment back to the way that it is supposed to be.

In the same way, we don't practice spiritual disciplines for the purpose of accumulating gold stars in God's exam booklet. We aren't accumulating efforts for the purpose of displaying them later to the awe of many.

We practice spiritual disciplines for the purpose of cleansing and restoring our souls back to the way that God intends for them to be. We practice spiritual disciplines for the purpose of removing the trash and debris that builds up between ourselves and God. We practice spiritual disciplines to remove the distortions in our lives that tell us that we're not worthy, that we're not loved, that we're not defined by the love God pours out upon us. Our spiritual disciplines condition us to live as Christians the way that God intends for us to live, rather than as the world twists our understanding of the Christian life into a contortion of efforts and misunderstandings that serve only to deepen our despair and drive us farther from true discipleship.

So disciplines help focus our attention on Christ, rather than everything else in our lives, and when we focus on Christ we can then build everything else on this firm foundation. By focusing on Christ first, we then begin to understand how the rest of life is to be ordered. By focusing on receiving his love and letting it transform our weary hearts, we then learn how we are to love the world and everything in it.

So we dust. It's not a glorious task, but it's a necessary one if we want to alleviate our spiritual misunderstandings. We do the work of discipleship, and through it we begin to see the world differently, not because our efforts have changed the world, but because our efforts have enabled us to see Christ and his love in new ways, and the Holy Spirit's transforming power can alter our vision and change our hearts so that we no longer drink from the wells of human ability from rather from Christ, the living water.