By Ashlie Miller

“Mom, how long do you want to keep out Christmas decorations?” my son asked four days after Christmas. The standing rule at our house is to have things put away by Epiphany or Three Kings’ Day — not because we celebrate a full 12 days of Christmas after Dec. 25 or the later holidays, but because that seems to be a good “this is too long” measurement for us. There is an itch to get the house reset.

January is when most of us crave a bit of order or reordering. It’s not quite a spring cleaning but more of reestablishing some things. Indeed, this column may be on a spread of other columns in the paper this weekend talking about resolutions, goals and words of the year — all great things to consider at this time. I wonder, though, about the “why” of it all. Why do we want order? Why in January? I know many moments of the year when I should just start all over. 

I think my answer came in my first Bible reading of the New Year. There are many reading plans that people follow, but I would venture to guess that most of them start with Genesis — appropriate since the word “Genesis” actually means “beginning.” As I read through the days of creation in chapter 1, I noticed that God separates things in the first three days — day and night, water and sky, land and water. For the next three days, He fills each environment with the appropriate creations — sun and celestials, fish and birds, animals and humans. 

Later, God says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” and then He does that very thing (Genesis 1:26-27). How are we like God? How do we bear His image? These are questions I asked my 9 and 6-year-old children. We talked about what God was already doing in Genesis. He created, put things in order and established relationships and communion with humans. As created beings, we also display that likeness. We are creative beings. We eventually get tired of our messy habitat and clean and reset it. We, too, desire relationships, even if we deny them with our apathetic actions and lack of intentionality. 

Whether you find yourself leaning into this type of goal setting or resisting the resolution urge, you are displaying a hint of the image of God. We can choose to ignore this as a divine thing. We can even label it an environmental adaptation to survive as a species. We may be completely antagonistic, but even still, we display marks of the One who created us. 

What do we do with that information? For starters, we can thank our Creator for putting that desire within us, causing us to look a bit like Him. Then, we can embrace this as an opportunity to display God within us (if He truly is) for the benefit of ourselves and others and to glorify Him. It may look like being intentional with the calendar to make space for serving others and sharing time with friends and strangers. We can also eliminate clutter in our hearts and minds. What has too much negative or ungodly influence? How can we fill the voids in our hearts? (Hint — that answer doesn’t come from within; it comes from God’s Word.)

Well, that is enough for now. Two of my sons just found a mound of stink bugs in the shed they are cleaning and organizing. I have decor sitting in front of my fireplace that I need to shelve, and I need to put something on the calendar before I forget and double-book myself.

Ashlie Miller and her husband, Chad, are reading through the Bible with the congregation of their new church family in Charlotte — Mission Bible Church.