This week, the kids and I did something we do four or five times a year. We went through their toys, discarded broken toys, chose some toys to give away, and reorganized what remained. It was easy at first - we readily gave away baby toys and games that hadn't been played with in a while. But as we went through the toy bin, the going got harder. The kids realized that if they wanted room for the new dolls their aunt sent them last month, they had to give away other dolls or stuffed animals, and that was difficult.

 

But for me, the hardest part of the whole thing was when we got to the bottom of the toy bin. All the random pieces to puzzles and games, all the small little trinkets they get from friends' birthday parties and shopkeepers, were there. The kids, of course, wanted to keep every single thing; for my own part, I didn't want to do the thankless task of matching missing puzzle pieces to puzzles and toys.

 

You see where this is going, I'm sure. Lent is a kind of "spring cleaning" of the soul just as we cleaned out the toy box. In the first week of Lent, I'm relieved, actually, to get rid of some of the big pieces of clutter in my life that I knew had been hampering my spiritual practices but somehow hadn't tackled in a while. I like toning down my eating practices, ramping up my prayer, focusing on making my relationships better, finding ways to give money. This first week of Lent, things seem mostly clear and I feel more free.

 

But by the second and third weeks, things don't look quite so easy. Once the big pieces are gone, what remains are the small pieces, hard to see, even harder to get rid of. In today's gospel (Matthew 5:20-26), Jesus helps us get a sense of both the big and small pieces that prevent us from "entering the kingdom of heaven." "You shall not kill" is a big piece - a commandment that seems obvious to us. Okay, most of us don't kill and we don't have to worry about that too much - do we?

 

But then Jesus lets us know that's not all there is. It isn't enough simply not to kill. We have to get into the small, seemingly less important junk in our lives - like our anger at others - to see that even anger is harmful for us. Jesus suggests that there's a link between the things we get angry over, and the ways that anger escalates into full-blown violence, even to the point of killing a person. Anger is a slippery slope of temptation, in other words. Jesus counsels us to repair our relationships wherever we can, even relationships with our opponents.

 

Well, that's much harder to do most of the time than avoiding killing another person!

 

The small stuff in our lives may seem insignificant, but it actually may have greater power to destroy us. Notice in the first reading (Ezekiel 18:21-28) that God says that a virtuous man, one who has followed all the laws, can still do something evil. Even one evil thing (no matter how small, apparently - the text does not say) can make God forget all the good we have done. 

 

The good news for us is that God also says in that passage that he just as easily welcomes the person who was doing evil but turns away from doing those evil things.

 

As we live out our Lent in the coming weeks, may we become more aware of the way even small things can disrupt our relationship with God and turn us toward doing evil. Today, let us pray for God's help in clearing out the small bits of clutter in our lives and rejoice in the good news that God welcomes us on our return journey to him.

 

- Jana M. Bennett