The Hard Work of Moving

A little over a week ago my wife and I packed up and moved to a new home.  If you’ve ever moved before then you know how big of a chore it is.  Boxes, furniture, trucks, tape, narrow hallways, fragile dishes, what to keep, what to get rid of, where to put things, etc.  Needless to say, moving is hard work.

Somehow after all of our stuff had been moved everything that our volunteer help (parents and in-laws) didn’t know where to put wound up in the one room that was designated to be my new office.  It was a disaster.  There were numerous stacks of boxes piled high to the ceiling.  I was left to stare at this mess of an “office” for several days.

My new home office.

There was no way around the fact that the only solution was to get in there and go through everything one box at a time.  It would be slow-going, tedious work, but work that had to be done if my office was ever going to be functional enough to get anything done in.  So after a few of days of procrastinating I got motivated and set my self to the task.

One box at a time I filtered my way through the wreckage.  I had to make a decision regarding everything.  Would I keep it?  Why?  And where would I put it?  If not, throw it away or give to charity?  Do I know anyone else who could use it?

Every gadget, every book, every accessory, every cable (there were a ton of cables!)—it all had to be be faced.  Eventually there was enough space cleared for me to place the larger pieces of furniture in the spots they needed to go.  From there it seemed liked the rest was easy.  The smaller stuff goes more quickly.

The Value of a Disciplined Mind

Today I was reminded of the hard work I did in sorting through and organizing my new office.  While preparing a paper comparing and contrasting the Protestant doctrine of imputed righteousness with the Roman Catholic teaching of infused righteousness I came across this little gem from John Piper.  In his helpful little book, Counted Righteous in Christ, he writes that,

“Raking is easy, but all you get is leaves.  Digging is hard, but you might find gold.”

His point is made as he encourages readers to do the hard work of thinking through a difficult chapter in his book.  It took me back to before I had straightened up my office.  Everything was so cluttered.  People had filled the room with all sorts of items—some helpful, some not.  I had to dig through it all and the end result was a nice home office.

I fear that too many of our minds are cluttered the way my home office was before I worked through the mess and made things right.  If we never take the time to dig through ideas, filter out the bad, and elucidate the good, then our minds will only be confused, crowded, and undecided.  No matter what it is that we’re considering, we need to do the hard work of disciplining our minds to think through stuff.

In the end, we’ll only be better off for having drawn our own conclusions.  And who knows, maybe we’ll find gold.