The Very Rev Albert Bogle highlights the benefits of decluttering both at home and in communities of faith.

‘PACKING and unpacking boxes’ is the theme we’ve chosen for Sanctuary First during the month of January. It starts on Boxing Day. I know it’s a bit confusing as Boxing Day is in December but why should a few days cheat us out of a good theme and a good day to launch a theme about boxes? As for the origins of Boxing Day, well it would appear that no one is quite sure, but there is a stong Christian tradition that seeks to link it with St Stephen’s Day.

Stephen, as we know, was among the first deacons appointed by the early Christians to look after the widows and orphans and those in need. Somehow this has become linked to gift boxes being delivered to the needy the day after Christmas known as St Stephen’s Day.

It has been suggested that the name Boxing Day arose out of the 19th century custom of servants returning home from service with boxes of leftover food from their master’s tables on Christmas Day.

Regardless of its origins, a day for boxing up a surplus of food and other things to pass on to others is surely worth celebrating.

How many of us have started already at the beginning of the year to box stuff up for the charity shop? Clothes we will never wear again are being boxed up ready to be passed on for someone else to wear. I think if truth be told we need more than one Boxing Day in the year, particularly if we started to recycle our clothes and articles no longer required.

Boxing things up and passing things on can have a cathartic effect on our lives.

We often hang on to things not because we will ever make use of them again but because we have given objects and things the right to have control over us. So this month in Sanctuary First we’re exploring the healing effect of decluttering our homes and our lives in order that we might enjoy a more simplified lifestyle.

At the start of this new year perhaps there are three areas we should all look at to begin to declutter. The physical spaces we inhabit, our personal spiritual lives, and then take a closer look at what we need to bring to an end in our church programmes in order that the important things can flourish.

You will be amazed at the change that can come over a person when they deal with the clutter that gathers around our homes and our lives. This is our opportunity to get the boxes and start clearing away objects, clothes, paperwork, diaries, things from the past that are to all intents weighing us down. Pack them up in the boxes and shred the paper and pass the things that might be of use to another into the local charity shop

Now when it comes to our spiritual lives, the writer of Hebrews has some advice to give us. We are to throw off the things that hold us down, the things that stop us from running in the race of faith. In other words each of us must take a good look at our life and reassess the things, the relationships, the attitudes that stop us running our best race.

Let’s box them up but where will we leave them, I hear you say? Who can we pass them on to? There is only one place we can take such a box. To the foot of the cross, for scripture tells us: ‘Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows.” Isa 53:4. Another scripture verse in Psalm 103: 12 reminds us that as far as the east is from the west so he has removed our sins from us. Our job is to gather them up, to face our wrong doings, ‘to box them up,’ you might say: ‘but it is only God who can dispose of the box.’ He becomes our sin bearer.

“Perhaps we all need to look at the programmes, the structures, the buildings we worship in and begin to declutter.“

When it comes to decluttering the communities of faith we live in, each of us needs to be careful that we’re not cluttering up the community with the things that we want rather than thinking about what is required to fulfill the needs of others. Our commission is to make disciples. Perhaps we all need to look at the programmes, the structures, the buildings we worship in and begin to declutter. Perhaps ask Jesus to help us fill a box to help us declutter his church.

Packing boxes might just be the order of the day for all of us.

This January, even if you are reading this and it’s not Boxing Day, remember every day can be a Boxing Day.