I had to admit it: I had barely gotten excited about Christmas this year.  Instead, all mental energy and anticipation had been focused on a different day.  The day I could begin tidying.

Recently, I had devoured a compellingly compact book called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and plotted and planned for a day when I could start the process just as the author instructed.  This required a quiet house and the amassing of all of my clothes in the living room.  Naturally, as a mother of a 2-year-old with 1.5 part-time jobs, it took some planning…and waiting. 

But finally the day came! I had prepared the night before by gathering all of my clothing and piling them on the living room floor so I would be ready as soon as my daughter, Estelle, took her afternoon nap.  With Spotify’s rainstorm playlist in the background, I held each clothing item in my hand and paused to consider whether or not it “sparked joy.”  By the time Estelle woke up from her nap, 3 hours later, I had completed the sorting. 

The only problem was that the main living space in our house was still a complete disaster.  All the clothes were still there, just in more piles.  Hangers littered the floor, making it impossible to walk through.  I had promised Estelle that I would clean up while she slept - she hates messes, and the clothes interrupted her path with the baby stroller – and I had failed.  (Also, the yard was a mess because at one point I got stuck sorting, cut down all our knockout rose bushes, and left thorny branches on the ground.)  My husband, Dave, came home to this scene and graciously accepted the childcare duties while I labored on to return order to the chaos.

By nearly 10 p.m. that night, I finished, and the result was gratifying.  But Estelle’s wishes had been pushed aside, Dave missed most of the basketball game he had really wanted to watch, and we ended up eating dinner in silence around 8:30 p.m.  My clothes were tidy, but I had created a tangible relational mess.

What happened?  And what had I expected?  The whole process made me stop and consider why I had obsessed about “tidying” in the beginning.  Let’s take a look at a quote from the book’s introduction: “When you’ve finished putting your house in order, your life will change dramatically.  Once you have experienced what it’s like to have a truly ordered house, you’ll feel your whole world brighten…Not only will you never be messy again, but you’ll also get a new start on life” (Kondo, p. 7). 

Ok, I know that this is not biblical, but it sure does sound nice, doesn’t it?  And there is a LARGE part of me that simply wants to take care of my own messes.  David Brooks describes this tempting mentality this way: “Effort produces reward.  If you work hard, play by the rules, and take care of things yourself, you can be the cause of your own good life” (The Road to Character).

Sure enough, I am guilty of that attitude far too often.  I want to make things right all by myself.  I want dominion over my surroundings.  I want to believe that if I can get our house in order, our life situation really would be better.  And of course, it’s not just about clothing or household items either.  Crises wouldn’t be as hard, temper tantrums not as frustrating, work not so fatiguing, because, hey look – my clothes are folded vertically and arranged from light to dark in my drawers. 

So in this season of Advent, instead of waiting expectantly for the celebration of Jesus’ birth, I was waiting for something else: a chance to do it myself.  But in the process, I failed miserably.  Sure, my clothes were neat, but my family suffered instead.

But in celebrating Christmas, Christians remember that God looked at the mess of our sin and unfaithfulness and literally entered into it.  Jesus was born in a barn (or something like it).  And besides coming to earth, Christ was also the means for God to fulfill his promise to redeem his people.  Jesus came to earth because we could not clean up our own mess. 

Marie Kondo tells us tidying will make our world brighter.  But 2 Corinthians 4:6 reminds us that God created light both literally and metaphorically: “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (ESV).  While Kondo claims that the right kind of tidying will make our surroundings clean forever, God promises to cleanse us from our sin and shame: “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool” (Isaiah 1:18). 

Graciously, Jesus doesn’t leave us out of the story, either.  He doesn’t say, “Please just sit over there and don’t touch anything while I fix this.”  Instead, in Matthew 11, Jesus offers a trade:

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” 

Jesus gives rest to the weary: those who see that no matter how hard they try, they cannot fix their messes on their own.  And at the same time, he gives us the right work.  We have the opportunity to participate in building his kingdom.  We can offer love and kindness to those in need.  And as Ecclesiastes 2:24 reminds us, we can even make our mundane tasks offerings of worship to him: “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God.”

 If you have a problem with household clutter, and you want to do something about it, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, has some really good ideas.  Thankfully, both the joys and struggles of life are more complex than tidying.  Jesus’ birth reminds us that God saw our mess, and it was ugly.  But he loved us enough to make it his mess.  Jesus took on the junk in our world to redeem it and make it more beautiful than we could ever imagine.