April 13, 2003: Organize

My mother kept a Booker T. Washington quote taped to the door or our refrigerator that read: “But gradually, by patience and hard work we brought order out of chaos, just as will be true of any problem if we stick to it with patience and wisdom and earnest effort.”

Mom used those words to motivate herself to keep the house clean. She always wanted things neat and orderly, but was never particularly good at getting them to be or stay that way. I inherited her genetic predisposition to clutter, and have passed it on to my sons. I am finding that the trait intensifies as it marches through the generations.

There are ways to justify sloppiness. When failing to bring order out of chaos, my mother drew comfort from another quote: "The cost of productivity is mess." (I think that was on the refrigerator too!) And she delighted in her personal interpretation of Proverbs 14:4: "The stall is clean where no oxen are, but much increase comes by strength of the ox." Granted - an oxen-free stall is nice and clean, but without those messy oxen the furrows don't get plowed and the grain does not get threshed. A clean stall is just a sign of sterile inactivity!

Well, as my mother and I would have to admit, that is not exactly true. I have known lots of people who are both productive and organized, and while I don't hate them, I do admit to being so jealous of them that it becomes my spiritual duty to restrain envy. They prove to me what I'd rather not believe: that order and productivity are in direct rather than inverse proportion. The more organized you are, the more you can get done. (Partly because you don't have to spend so much time looking for things.)

Order is good. The Apostle Paul told the chaotic Corinthians, "Everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way" (1 Corinthians 14:40). If you lack the knack for order, you are not excused from trying to achieve it. You'll just have to go at it with more of Booker T. Washington's "patience and wisdom and earnest effort."

I better stop here and clean my office.