Debris

Last weekend was General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and I was impressed with a challenge given by Russell M. Nelson, President and Prophet. He spoke of the renovation taking place on the Salt Lake Temple. Apparently there is considerable excavation as they dig down to the foundation, and much debris to be screened for historical finds and then the remainder to be throw out as trash.

Our lives accumulate debris. I hope it’s not as bad as I sometimes see in every corner of my house…lurking unfinished projects, ‘things’ I’ve long forgotten why I saved them in the first place. Going through them is usually overwhelming, and exhausting to be prioritizing so many things at once. Do I really have time for this? Am I still interested in that? Why do I have so many of those? and, Oh, is that where that is!

President Nelson challenged us to identify debris in our lives and eliminate it. Just like cleaning up a discouragingly cluttered room, the thought of looking inward for a clean-up, is not exactly exciting. It would be interesting to see how we spend our time each day. We all have things we consider of supreme importance, and I suspect they aren’t cleaning the house, or games on our phone, or watching TV, or reading facebook posts.

I suppose the first step would be to identify what those really important things are and if we are really getting around to them, or, are you like me, and keep saying, “I’ll get to it next week….” I’ve said that about a couple of projects for more than a year now. So, I’m going to try to clean up. Unfortunately, it’s probably going to involve some habit breaking and changing, and that’s hard.

I need to post a poem about it. But I don’t have one. Do you? Somebody post us some lines about our debris.

Listen to the General Conference message on www.churchofjesuschrist.org