Cleaning out the Garage

Every married couple dreams of having a garage. However, men and women have entirely different reasons and motivations for wanting a garage.

When a woman looks at a garage, she sees a big room with oversized cabinets where she can store all of her old photo albums, childhood memorabilia, seasonal decorations and the myriad of small kitchen appliances that can no longer be stored in the kitchen. She also sees a place where all of the laundry and cleaning supplies are neatly organized, making the job of household cleaning a relative ease.

When a man looks at a garage, he sees one thing—a personal workshop. A man dreams of having a workbench with pegboard walls to hang all the tools on. In the man’s garage, there are certainly plenty of cabinets, but these cabinets don’t store household knickknacks. Instead, they store power tools, sports equipment and camping gear.

In the woman’s garage, there is plenty of space to fit the family car. Pulling the car into the garage satisfies the woman’s need for security and safety.

Men also desire the garage to house the family car, but for very different reasons. The man desires to bring the car into the garage so that he can turn his garage into a personal auto shop. When the man brings the car into the garage, he is able to live out his childhood fantasy of being a grease monkey in relative privacy. This enables the man to avoid encountering neighbors and would be onlookers who instinctively know that the man doesn’t know the first thing about cars.

For the last several months, our garage has been inaccessible to our family car. Lately, our garage has been a dumping ground for household junk that we haven’t taken the time to put away. Boxes of seasonal items remained on the floor instead of being neatly stowed in the cabinet. Unused baby items were tossed on the garage floor in the hopes that someday, someone would take them off our hands. Power tools and sawdust lay strewn across the floor in homage of Dave’s latest household project.

Last week, we finally got around to cleaning out the garage. How nice it was when we were finally done to be able to walk across the floor without having to step over something. It was even nicer to be able to park the van in the garage and lock it up for the night.

Afterwards, I thought about how much our Christian lives are like a cluttered garage. I know this may sound like a stretch, but please stick with me here.

Think of the garage as representing your Christian life and the car represents Jesus, who wants access to your life. The clutter strewn about the garage floor is the sin that we often don’t deal with. With stuff laying around, there is no way to pull the car into the garage. It’s so easy to just turn out the light, shut the door and forget that there’s a messy garage. It’s only when we decide to make a concerted effort to clean the garage out, that there will be room for the van.

When you think about your life, what are some of the things laying around in your “garage” that you’ve avoided dealing with? Though it takes effort, think about how nice it is when you’re completely clean before the Lord, giving him free and complete access to your life, allowing you to live victoriously for Him.

These are the things I’ve been thinking about lately. I’ve also been thinking about how nice it would be to build a shed! J