Today’s post is the fourth in a series of posts about issues in our homes and hearts that may be in need of some spring cleaning. To read the first in the series, click here.
As our Spring Cleaning continues, we need to move on to the bathroom and specifically the medicine cabinet. Our medicine cabinets often get filled with outdated prescription and non-prescription drugs that we needed at one time, but instead of getting rid of them when they are no longer needed, we have held onto them just in case. Yet, the time has come to dispose of them because they are no longer healthy for us – either because they are expired or because they are a temptation or a crutch that we hold on to.
Pills aren’t the only way we medicate ourselves. The medicine cabinet represents the other drugs in our lives like television, books, gossip, the internet, alcohol, and many other things that can be used as medication to try to escape pain that we live with daily. While some of these things aren’t good in any amount, others may not inherently be bad for us. But, when we use them as an escape, or to an unhealthy degree, we are abusing them, and most likely we are masking the underlying issues rather than treating them. For this reason, we need to clean them out of our lives.
The real issue involved here is a heart that is broken or injured in some way and needs healing, and simply medicating ourselves isn’t dealing with the problem at hand.
So just like in our medicine cabinet we need to keep some items like band-aids and antibiotic ointment that promote healing for our bodies, we need to keep prayer, our Bibles, and friends that build us up to promote healing of our hearts. Instead of seeking escape and medication, we need to be seeking the Lord’s healing of our pain so that we don’t need to medicate ourselves anymore.
And just like anyone who has had to take a daily medication for any period of time can tell you that it is so nice when you don’t have to take that medication anymore, when your heart is healed and you aren’t running for whatever it is that you run to for “medication,” you will be freed up in a new way.
What “medications” did I miss here? Can you think of others?
(For more about the things we run to vs. the ONE we should run to, read this post.)
Good words and very thought provoking as we examine and clean up inside and out.