Spring Cleanup

As many of you know I have spent the last month preparing my house to put it on the market. I have accepted a senior pastor position in Trenton IL about 30 miles east of St Louis. And I am getting ready to move in a couple of months.

The spring is a traditional time for us to catch up on neglected projects from the winter (and for some of us ignored projects from years and years of neglect).

For the last four weeks, I’ve built a new fence and gate on the north side of the house, helped my wife spread 6 cubic yards of mulch and re-stain the deck (she really did most of the work). I laid a new floor in the front foyer, kitchen, breakfast nook, back hallway, half bath, and laundry room. I’ve also had to install a new toilet and replace a number of valves and calk the main bathroom. I though I had fixed everything there was to fix in this home and had called to have a real estate agent out to view the house and put it on the market. Unfortunately, the agent was unable to make our appointment due to a family loss and we rescheduled.

The next day I was looking at my breakfast nook ceiling and noticed a wet spot on the ceiling. I can tell you that wet spots on the ceilings bode no good. I went upstairs to check the main bathroom and found that the valve on the toilet had gone bad. So this weekend instead relaxing and enjoying the fruits of my labors I was replacing the valve, calking some more places and repainting the nook’s ceiling.

I was not real happy about my “extra” labor but I realized that I had a tendency to treat my Christian life like my house. I worked really hard to get it in shape and then wanted to sit back and relax for the next 5, 10 or even 20 years and do nothing. In the mean time the house was quickly falling into disrepair. Instead I need to set aside some time to do maintenance on a regular basis. I also need to schedule regular maintenance in my Christian life as well. Checking the foundation, the outside and the inside and then repairing the problems that develops from daily wear-and-tear.

How about you? Have you done a walk around to see how your Christian life is doing? Are there things that you need to repair and refresh? How has your time with God been going? Are you spending time communing with Him? Do you need to reprioritize your schedule?

I think I’m about caught up on the neglected repairs, but now I need to concentrate on some daily maintenance. Maybe you need to rework your schedule, too.

Handyman Val