Magnetic Confession

 

Search me, God, and know my heart.

Test me, and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.

Psalm 139:23-24

I played with a magnet yesterday.

My task was to find all the metal midst the mess, using a really strong magnet suspended on some rope.

It’s all part of the final push in the demolition project of one of the out buildings on the property.  

It was so satisfying!  And rather surprising.  

What looked like fairly clean mulch of left-over organic material, would actually yield several magnetized layers of nails and braces and the odd bits of wire.  Bolts and screws too.  And a whole array of rusted out hacksaw blades.  I would sweep over the same area several times before it was clear.   Then move on.

It’s important to the whole project, this down-to-the-metal kind of cleansing.  For the environment.  For the restoration of the space to a more natural state.  For what the building inspector called “property standards.”   What I was finding was all rusted and bent and most of the time sharp on some end or edge.  Where I was putting it all was a plastic pot that will be taken to the dump to be properly disposed of. 

It was a soothing, satisfying kind of thing to do.  Swing the magnet on the rope slowly back and forth, pull out all the unwanted junk, and then, when it got too loaded down, walk over to the container and pry it all off.   Repeat.

Wanting to sort out some of the past twenty days back in the city, I was praying a fair bit yesterday too, and some of it while I was swinging the magnet.  Opening myself up to reflection on why I arrived Thursday more tired than twenty days worth. 

Maybe that’s why, in the back and forth of it, I gradually formed a thought, vague and misty at first, but then coming clearer, as if God was conversing with me in the prayer.  And it was reminding me of how easy it can be to keep stuff hidden that really needs to be drawn out and thrown properly away.  Sin, and worry, and the need to have all the important things under my control…like that.  The plastic pot for that is called ‘confession.’

And maybe that’s why the last verses of Psalm 139 eventually came to mind.  And then there it was, one of those ‘in the moment paraphrases’ that happens often enough to me, maybe it does for you too.

“Sweep the magnet of Your loving correction over me, Lord.

Get under the way things look on the surface and pull out all that’s rusted and toxic in me.

All the fear-driven ‘doing’ that replaces the Spirit-led ‘being.’

And keep doing it.  Keep leading me in ways that best reflect Your eternal vision for us all.”

Or something along those lines.

I didn’t want to come, like I said on Thursday. 

But I’m glad I did. 

There’s lots to do here. 

Here on the cottage property. 

Here in my heart.