Soul-fill

It’s back. It’s all back.

For months I had labored to clear the yard—in preparation for an Easter party—only to uncover trash a former owner had dumped and been too lazy to dispose of properly. A Frisbee. The roof of a doghouse. More shingles. Glass shards. Trash bags. A Skittles wrapper. A plastic cup. A chain grafted into a tree that had once shackled a poor dog. I was appalled that anyone could be so lazy. So irresponsible. So callus as to cover it up as if it was not even there, ignoring the obvious mess. What little regard for others.

Then conviction: I do this, I thought, drawing in my breath.

I tend to be lazy about dealing with what is littering my soul. I cover it up, ignore that it’s there, that I made a mess. How irresponsible of me. How careless, how thoughtless, how disrespectful of others. The buried, covered-up trash we discard in our souls rots there. We can cover it up, but someone will discover it. The consequences of not putting it in its proper place are pollution in our lives—and hurt in the ones we love.

Yet I have filled the broken places with more broken pieces.

Jesus came to make me clean, to gather up the broken pieces, to fill my soul with his life-giving spirit. Just when I am about to despair at the landfill of my heart, I recall the words of Hebrews 9:11–14 that show how Jesus replaced the sacrificial atoning the Hebrew people performed on their own, “B.C.”

When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation. 12 He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. 13 The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. 14 How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

I am thankful that I live A.D., in a time when Jesus’ work on the cross means that all the striving to rid myself of sin, of death-inducing ways of relating, can be “All Done.” For Christ on the cross means “All Done.” The wages of sin is death—and Jesus paid it with his life. What sins or harmful wounds are you trying to bury or cover? What would it look like if you allowed Jesus to unearth them?