spring cleaning

Its clean! The basement is totally and truly and profoundly clean. There are still toys to sort through and a diminishing pile of boxes with paper we need to chuck (why is it so hard through away badly written college papers?) and I haven't yet done the Great Spring Clothes Change Over of 2012 but that's because it could probably still snow.
But its clean!

The basement, both in this house and the old one, has always been my living icon of sin and hypocracy. I go on cleaning the upper layers of the house, rearranging the furniture, dusting, vacuuming, scrubbing my kitchen floor, while all the time, the true rot lies just underneath me, filthy, disorganized, full of broken toys and junk. I don't have to go down there very often. I can scuttle down with my eyes almost completely closed and get the thing I'm looking for or quickly throw in some laundry, but it seems I never find the time to really face it.

And even if I were to go down and face it and clean it, where would I begin? So I go on cleaning and polishing the outside of my cup, white washing my tomb and letting the dirt accumulate unabated.

But then grace comes down in human form and starts cleaning (in this case, Matt) and I am able to participate. I started sorting through junk and throwing it away and rearranging things to make more sense and dusting. But Matt really did the heavey lifting. He got in there and got the actual dirt out. God, once he even gives us the grace to look into the mess of ourselves, is the one who really erradicates sin, although we do get to work along with him, if only to mumble along gratefully, 'oh, I've been meaning to get rid of that ugly thing for ages, just never got around to it.'

And now! because we did what we were supposed to do, and the weather is supposed to be fine, it may be that we will have time to begin planting some garden. How biblical is that? (I mean, I ask, but obviously, its very very biblical.)