by Clint Wilson
[This blog is a reflection on the first week in our Lenten guide, “The Art of Presence: Practices for the Time of Lent.” This guide encourages daily habits oriented toward core, spiritual practices—in this week’s case, the art of Letting Go. If you’d like to receive these short, weekly guides, you can sign up for the weekly email by clicking here.]
You may have heard of the Japanese influencer and “organizing consultant,” Marie Kondo. She became famous nearly a decade ago for her fairly radical method of encouraging people to “let go” of their material possessions. She calls it the KonMari Method:
The KonMari Method is a simple but effective tidying method, ensuring you will never again relapse to clutter. It uses a unique selection criterion – choosing what sparks joy! You are not choosing what to discard but rather choosing to keep only the items that speak to your heart. Through tidying, you can reset your life and spend the rest of your life surrounded by the people and things that you love the most.
Regardless of whether this organizational schema is effective or makes sense to you, there is some interesting theology underpinning the central question of this method, “Does it spark joy?” What if we saw letting go as connected to joy? What if we drew a line that led from releasing our resentments and sparking the joy found in the freedom of letting go?
Some in the Christian world have pushed back against Kondo’s idea on the grounds that it places overdue importance on material objects and their ability to “spark joy.” Others have, quite understandably, felt concerned about promoting a practice rooted in the Shinto animist tradition, a religious worldview that naturally does not align with Christianity. While valid points all, Kondo’s insistence upon joy as a litmus test to determine significance—whether regarding our collected possessions or animating principles—does have some deeply Christian parallels.
For one thing, David associates the idea of joy with the salvation offered by God: “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me” (Ps. 51:12). If the ultimate source of our joy is God’s saving grace, then asking “Does it spark joy?” is actually another means of asking “Does it help me understand my place in God’s salvation history?”
A photo album on the coffee table sparks greater joy than a pile of junk mail because the former tells us a clearer story about who we are—and for whom we live. A tattered paperback novel that changed our life sparks more joy than a pristine collector’s edition of a so-called “important” book because the former shaped us in ways that are far more important than what some literary critic thinks! A child’s artwork hung cockeyed on our refrigerator door sparks more joy than the framed painting in the living room because the former tells us something deeper about the beauty inhabiting our real lives, in all our mess and fragility and coloring outside the lines. The list could go on.
Hence, asking what sparks joy for us could be another way of asking: How can I let go of those things that are not tied to the story that God is telling about me? Resentment, greed, fear, despair, pride, envy, and conceit—these things not only destroy joy, they cloud our vision of the “joy of our salvation.”
And let us not forget that, according to the author of Hebrews, joy was a primary motivator for the work that secured our salvation. It was in pursuit of “joy” that Jesus faced his suffering on the cross: “Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb, 12:1–2).
In our own seasons of suffering, of grief and loss and confusion, can we likewise set our eyes on “the joy set before” us—the joy of our sure and steadfast hope in Christ? Whatever obscures our view of that joy, whatever tempts us to look elsewhere for false and fleeting substitutes for true joy, that surely is worthy of being discarded like an old sweater that no longer sparks joy.
Marie Kondo promotes her method’s ability, with a degree of hyperbole no doubt, to “reset your life.” The practice of Letting Go allows us greater opportunities for presence with the “people and things that [we] love the most.” And if the object of our heart’s greatest desire is knowing Christ, then perhaps letting go will spark the joy found in him alone.
This week’s practice…
Practice #1: Letting Go
The Practice: Releasing our grip on imagined control through generosity, in all its forms.
The Point: Holding onto things can cause anxiety, and anxiety is an enemy of presence.
The Purpose: What does it mean to “Let Go” in your life right now?
Key Verse: Proverbs 3:5–10
1. “The KonMari Method,” konmarie.com, accessed February 16, 2026, https://konmari.com/about-the-konmari-method/.
2. See Becca Ehrlich, “Why Marie Kondo Didn’t Work for Me,” Christian Minimalist, January 31, 2019, accessed February 25, 2026, https://christianminimalism.com/2019/01/31/why-marie-kondo-didnt-work-for-me/.
3. See Kim Anderson, “Marie Kondo: Tidying Up and Spirituality,” Popular Culture and Theology, August 19, 2019, accessed February 25, 2026, https://popularcultureandtheology.com/2019/08/19/marie-kondo-tidying-up-and-spirituality/.