Last week, my friends and family got a Snapchat that made them question if I was capable of living alone. I was reading my Evergy email with tips and tricks for saving my on energy costs, (yes, dear Evergy PR person, someone does read your content) and one of the suggestions was to empty the lint catch in your dryer to increase efficiency. 

I thought to myself, “Man I have not thought about the lint catch since moving in… six months ago…” 

After a panicked pause, I rushed over to my dryer to figure out where the lint catch even was. When I pulled it out, I started cackling. I can almost guarantee you have never seen that much lint in your life. It was a LOAF of lint. The size of an actual loaf of bread. This is not an exaggeration. It was SO. MUCH. LINT. 

Every person I shared my debacle with got a kick out of it but the first words out of all of them were “Fire hazard!” 

Yes, yes. I know it’s a fire hazard. It just completely slipped my mind that I needed to do anything about it. 

Funny, isn’t it? The way things slip our mind and build up to a fire hazard. (Come on, you know I’m a sucker for a good life metaphor, you had to know where this was going.) 

Life piles up pretty fast. We rush about with jobs and social lives and chores and trips and family issues and suddenly we wake up and realize we’ve brought very little of it to the feet of Jesus to clean out all the muck and help us sort through what it all meant. 

The result of the buildup is a fire hazard, either for our own souls or for the souls of our loved ones when we ultimately snap back at them or do something destructive out of our own distraction and thoughtlessness. 

So pause. Take some emotional and spiritual inventory. Take a walk. Talk with a trusted friend. What have you been learning? What is Jesus trying to show you? Where have you failed and where do you need to ask for forgiveness? 

What things are distracting you from your relentless pursuit of the heart of Jesus? What people have been encouraging you in your pursuit? What are you thankful for? What still hurts? 

Life comes at us so fast, but we were made for eternity. So check the lint catch and see what’s built up. Take some time to prayerfully sort through the last few months. You might be surprised at what you find. He is faithful, even when we are faithless.