I remember the day each year my mom would announce the Spring Cleaning Weekend. Yes, it was an entire weekend event. No one was allowed to make plans that weekend, and we all dreaded it. I have 3 older sisters and we never looked forward to this event. Friday would arrive and the list of duties would be assigned: cleaning closets, cupboards, trunks, under beds, and the basement. There was no place in the house that would be overlooked. We would wake up the next morning, the high point of the day, since Pa would go get doughnuts for breakfast. Then we would dig in. Pretty soon the house was filled with music for the background. We would begin peering into those dreaded nooks and cranies.

Once the really obvious spots were out of the way it was time to take everything off the high shelves and begin washing all those nick-knacks my mom had caringly placed about the house. I would role up my sleeves and begin soaking items in the bathtub, gently drying them and handing them back to my mom. Talk about great teaching moments. Everything that I took for granted came to life. The silly cannon that weighed about 20 pounds and wasn’t much larger than my hand. It turns out that my Grandpa (a man that died long before I was born) had made that canon by hand, and it really fired. Or the hand carved name plate that once sat on his desk. He was a career military man, and I learned about the his life, his travels and the secret codes he and my grandmother shared so he could let her know where he was when he was away. He served duirng World War II and their mail was always sensored, so they had a code to get past that. I learned about this man I had never known and I learned to love him, though I never laid eyes on him. I know him in my heart because of the time my mom and I spent spring cleaning.

Psalm 145:4 says,”One Generation shall praise Your works to another, And shall declare Your mighty acts.” My mother shared with me as a child the works and life of a man I had never known and couldn’t see. There’s a man that I tell my children about and in some ways these men are very similar. I share with my children about Jesus, they can’t see him now, but they are learning is great love for us, and my love for him. He has left behind His story, His live’s work serving others, and His great love for us. There are items in my home that are caringly placed about the house that draw our attention back to him. I open my Bible and share the letters he’s written to us and the many names by which He is called. He didn’t make a cannon that really shoots, Jesus made a way for me to live forever and that is the greatest gift I can share with my children.

I still dread the spring cleaning. I don’t make the same lists my mother did, and with small children it’s not yet their time to share in the big cleaning. But we clean our hearts. I take out those memories of how God has worked in my life and share them with my boys. Cleaning can be painful in the beginning, and you get a little dirty, but in the end you are changed and the clean newness feels great.

Heather Schutz and her husband Mike have two boys and currently reside in the Kalamazoo area. Heather also serves as a ministry Assistant for Calvary’s Children’s Ministries.