What Sweeping the Floor Taught Me About Sweeping the Soul

🧹 Sweeping the Floor, Sweeping the Heart

(Scripture in the Ordinary)

There’s something about sweeping that has never lost its place in daily life.

It’s one of the oldest tasks there is—gathering the dust, brushing away the crumbs, clearing the path with nothing but a broom and the patient work of hands. It doesn’t demand much noise or attention. It doesn’t shout its importance. But it leaves a mark every time—quiet order where there was quiet disorder.

Living off-grid, we feel that truth even more.
There’s no electric vacuum roaring to life at the touch of a button.
More often than not, it’s an old-fashioned hand broom doing the work—just as it would have been generations ago.

And with a barnyard full of daily chores, muddy boots, and a pack of dogs (as adorable as they are), daily sweeping isn’t optional—it’s essential.
If it isn’t done regularly, the dust builds up fast.
And if life, as it often does, has us busy, it becomes far too easy to overlook what’s right under our feet.

We know it’s there.
We know it needs tending.
But somehow, the priorities shift, and the mess lingers, quietly growing, quietly tolerated.

Until one day, the sun slants through the kitchen just right—and there’s no ignoring it anymore.

The Daily Dust We Don’t Notice

And isn’t that just how it happens in the heart, too?

A little dust here—a hurried word.
A little dirt there—resentment left unspoken.
A few careless thoughts swept under the rug of busyness.

Left unchecked, the heart begins to gather its own clutter.

At first, we notice it. We mean to get to it.
But soon enough, we learn to live with it instead.
We stop seeing it clearly—and worse, we stop tending to it.

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”
—Psalm 51:10

It isn’t the great tragedies that most often harden the heart—it’s the little overlooked build-ups.
The slow creep of dust over sacred things.

Sweeping is Repentance, Too

There’s a humility to sweeping.
It’s not glorious work.
It’s not work you can finish once and for all.

And that’s just like repentance.

You don’t sweep the floor once in a lifetime and call it good.
You don’t confess once and think your heart will never gather dust again.
You sweep daily.
You bend low.
You gather what doesn’t belong and lay it aside.
And you trust that there’s mercy in the clearing, just like there’s beauty in a freshly swept floor.

An Invitation to Sweep Both

Today, as I picked up my hand broom, brushing grit tracked in from the barnyard, I realized it wasn’t just my kitchen floor that needed attention.

It was my spirit, too.

A few sharp words I hadn’t made right.
A small bitterness tucked in unnoticed.
The slow, careless dust of hurry and distraction gathering in my prayers.

So I swept both.

The kitchen.
The corners of my soul.

Not out of guilt, but out of gratitude—because the Lord gives us a chance every day to clean the places we’ve let go too long.

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
—1 John 1:9

The dust doesn’t mean defeat.
It just means it’s time to pick up the broom again.

🙏 A Prayer for Sweeping More Than Floors

Lord, teach me to see the dust before it gathers.
Teach me to sweep early and often, not with fear, but with trust.
Create in me a clean heart, not just once, but over and over again.
Let the work of my hands remind me of the work You are always willing to do within me.
Help me not to grow comfortable with cluttered corners in my spirit.
Let my life be a clean place for Your presence to dwell.
Thank You for brooms, and for grace.

Amen.