"What's in this little plastic dish I just discovered in the back of the refrigerator?" my husband asked handing me a small container.

Lifting the lid, I carefully studied the contents which were sea green in color with a covering of fuzzy moss. I had never seen anything like it before, nor smelled anything like it either. "Maybe some green beans?" I ventured.

Then my husband pulled out a second container. "How about this one?" he inquired as he showed me another mystery food item. This one was a brownish-yellow and covered with greasy slime. It looked like it could it have been a piece of meat at one time.

"Were you saving these for a special surprise dinner?" he asked sarcastically. "Or perhaps you were growing some homemade penicillin?"

Stooping down I peered into the refrigerator and spotted several more "plastic coffins" toward the back of the bottom shelf. "I've been meaning to throw out these things," I explained, "but I just never got around to doing it." I glanced down at my watch and remarked, "But I certainly don't have time now. I'll get rid of all these old leftovers tomorrow." And with those words, I closed the refrigerator door, allowing the "deceased" to spend more time in the morgue.

How long had I been storing that rotting food in the fridge? Probably for weeks. It should never have been saved in the first place--a little drib of this and a drab of that. It was no surprise to me that all those little coffins were hiding in there, but it was just too much trouble to scrape them out and put them in the dishwasher. And so they had just remained where they were filled with putrid and decomposing food.

Occasionally I had even opened the lids of the little containers and taken a look inside, but then I had quickly closed them up and put them back in the refrigerator to rot a little more. Out of sight, out of mind. Yet I had to admit that it was embarrassing to have someone else discover the decaying matter I was saving. It was one thing if I knew, but quite another to have my husband uncover my secret coffins.

What do you have stored away in the dark corners of your mind? Have you allowed bitterness, resentment, prejudice and hate to remain when they should have been tossed out long ago? It's amazing what a short time it takes for a little stored up rejection to turn into some really repulsive resentment and bitterness. Even a small amount of prejudice shoved into the dark recesses of your mind as a child can be brought forth later as hate-covered anger and violence.

As Christians, all of us are well aware of the need to examine ourselves and remove any corrupt thing that might remain within us. But sometimes it's easier to just let the hidden sins stay in their coffins stored in the back corners of our minds. We often prefer not to even look at the unpleasant leftovers from our past, so we simply close the door and hope that no one will ever notice what still remains rotting inside of us.

Put out the garbage! Remove the coffins! It's time to clean out the refrigerator of our hearts!