In the Basement of my home there is darkness

Many years ago I started experiencing visions and dreams on a regular basis.  Of course everyone has dreams, but these dreams and visions seemed to be beyond the usual dream.  I shared one of them with Julia over the breakfast table one morning  (Suffice it to say, I no longer rely on Julia to interpret my dreams).  I then began to talk to Beverly and she put me in touch with a book that helped me to understand how God uses dreams.  I was beginning an adventure that has been exciting at times, strange at times and frightening at other times.

It was during that time the Lord began to deal with me about things that were buried in my basement so to speak.  All of our homes have a basement.  The author speaks of this as the Holy of Holies.  I don’t.  I call it the basement.

When Julia and I lived in Dayton, we had a neigbour about 3 or 4 doors down from us, that unknown to us or anyone else would use the basement of the apartment for storing his trash.  He would open the door to his basement and instead of throwing his trash out, would store it in his basement.  That worked ok for a while.  No one knew and even if you went to his home, you wouldn’t know it, because the door to the basement was shut.  But you can only store so much in the basement and finally he was caught.  What a mess!  How much easier if he had taken the time to walk over the the container and simply dumped the trash. But he didn’t do that.

I have done the same thing over the years.   I’ve stored stuff in the basement until finally, after 58 years, there is no more room in the basement.  It’s time to clean it out!  How much easier it would have been had I taken the time over the last 40 years to simply take the day’s trash, and throw it out, and start afresh.  But for some reason, I didn’t do that.  I started packing it in the basement.  I know now how wrong that was, but at the time, it seemed ok.  There was plenty of room down there and who would know anyway.

CS Lewis say’s in Mere Christianity:

Thus, in one sense. the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, 'You must do this. I can't.

I walk to the basement door with my daily load of garbage and trash.  I open it to throw the carefully wrapped and protected package of refuse down the stairs.  When it suddenly dawns on me that there is no more room.  No matter how hard I try to pack it in, there is no more room.  The basement is full.  I set down the day’s package and I sit quietly in front of a basement door that is open.  The carefully hidden rubbish of my life is staring me in the face.  The odor is appalling.  The sheer lunacy of packing away 40 years of garbage and waste in the basement of my house hits me full in the face.  I lower my head and start to weep.  I can’t do this anymore Lord, I can’t.  This is why I need a saviour!

Lord, my basement is full.  There is no more room.  It’s ugly down there Lord and I can’t make it better.  I don’t have the strength to clean it up.  I’m scared and I’m embarrassed and I’m tired Lord.  I’m tired of trying to hide all of this.  But I can’t clean it up, I don’t have the strength or the courage to do so.  Please Lord, clean this up for me.