BBC Radio
Leicester Thought for the
Day
© John Denney 21
January 2005
Spring has come early in the Denney household. Spring cleaning that is. My wife, the light of my life, has been
at it for the last fortnight. The
works. Cupboards turned out; the
oven dismantled; boxes of unwanted items put out for the charity shops; gallons
of cleaning sprays; dusters by the acre.
The full Monty. The cat
hides away in a corner to stop being hoovered. My contribution in this enterprise is
limited: nipping to the shops for more cleaning supplies, keeping well out of
the way, and generally concurring that men are totally useless when it comes to
this sort of thing. Oh, and to grit
my teeth about the six carrier bags full of my beloved books that have “got to
go”. I think I’ll try and hide them
in the garage.
However, I have to admit that where my wife has cleaned
and scrubbed, you can certainly see the difference. Things look as good as new. All her efforts have been
worthwhile.
It’s at the beginning of the year that lots of people
try to spring clean their lives.
Did you start a diet after New Year’s Day? Have you been detoxing? Or maybe you decided to give up smoking,
or take up exercise, or cut back on your drinking, or chocolate, or cakes. How many of us started the year with
good intentions! How difficult it
is to keep the promises you made to yourself!
There’s another aspect of “you”, though. It concerns your thoughts and your
attitudes, your mind and your heart.
Is there a broken relationship in your life that needs restoring? Have your attitudes been called into
question by someone who knows you well?
Is there a secret “something” in your life that you’re ashamed
of?
One
of the great themes of the Bible is that we all need to repent. Repentance is thinking again, turning
away from bad things towards good things.
It’s a sort of spring-cleaning of our hearts and minds. Saint Paul put it like
this:
Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll
do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable,
authentic, compelling, gracious--the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the
ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.[1]
Now what does it say on my
shopping list? Orange oil
degreasing spray. Orange? Degreaser? Orange?