Today is National Clean Up Your Room Day.

Today is every parent’s dream—a day devoted to cleaning up your room! So on a scale of 1 to 10—with 1 being neat as a pin and 10 being clutter beyond control, how would you rate your room right now? Here are some questions to help you determine the state of your room:

• Is it impossible to see the floor?
• Are the clothes you wore from last week still in the same place where you had dropped them?
• Are there CDs (not in cases) in sight?
• Are the dust bunnies taking over underneath your bed?
• Do you have to move things in order to walk from one side of the room to the other?

If you have answered yes to four or more questions, put this book down right now and clean your room! No, wait until you finish reading.

You’ve probably heard the expression “cleanliness is next to godliness,” and while that sounds like it came right out of the Bible, it didn’t. But the Bible does tell us that God likes order. Look around the world he created. Everything has its proper place and function. God wants his people to be that way, too. In today’s verse, Paul is speaking about worship and God’s desire that it be done in a certain orderly way. Where there is order, there is God’s peace. But when there is disorder and chaos, God cannot work.

The same principle applies to us. When you are disorganized, when you can’t find anything because of all the clutter in your room, you will not be able to get things done. Cleaning your room is just one way to bring the order that God desires into your life. And it for sure will lead to a more peaceful family.

For God is not a God of disorder but of peace, as in all the other churches (1 Corinthians 14:33).

To do

So your room’s completely clean? If not, grab a garbage bag and a dust cloth and get to work!

Also on this day . . .

1773—The English Parliament passed the Tea Act, which taxed all tea in the U.S. colonies.

1872—Victoria Woodhull became the first woman nominated for U.S. president.

1908—The first Mother’s Day observance took place during a church service in Grafton, West Virginia.

1960—The U.S.S. Triton submarine completed the first undersea trip around the world.

1994—Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black president.

From Betsy Schmitt and Dave Veerman, 365 Trivia Twist Devotions: An Almanac of Fun Facts and Spiritual Truth for Every Day of the Year (Cincinnati: Standard, 2005). Scripture quotations are from the New Living Translation unless otherwise noted.