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I live in a small town of barely more than 10,000 people. There are, however, not one but two self-storage businesses within a five mile radius. Imagine my surprise to see red earth and bulldozers in a field less than two miles away from my home with a “Coming Soon: Self Storage” sign affixed to a newly erected construction fence. Soon there will be three self-storage businesses that will be happy to hold on to my stuff.
I guess my mind is on storage “crap” today because I am getting up the nerve to clean out the dreaded CLOSET UNDER THE STAIRS. I could probably have my daughter film a horror movie out of that one. The closet, I’m afraid to say, is so packed and jumbled that a person has to bend over and climb over mountains of junk just to get to the back. What is supposed to be a coat closet for guests has become a catch-all of all the stuff I don’t know what to do with. There’s a Dora the Explorer game my daughter played with six years ago…it’s missing about half its pieces, but for some odd reason it moved to Texas with us. We have a solid brass bar sink in there somewhere. Yes…you read that correctly. There is even a SINK in the closet! My in-laws gave it to us when they moved. The original intent was to “one day when we win the lottery” put in a bar upstairs and use the brass sink. Other goodies include a baby gate, tupperware plastic bins filled with half-completed photo albums, assorted pillows, black widow spiders (probably), and a set of doggie pooper-picker-upper baggies that we’ve never used. When I get off this chair and pull everything out, I’ll probably have more interesting things to report.
What I refuse to do, however, is to buy storage for my junk.
I think Americans (including myself!) have enjoyed so many blessings that when hard times hit, we have a whole generation (mine) that does not know how to do without. My parents’ generation knew all about pulling up those bootstraps and “making do” with what you have — and being grateful for it. People saved and re-used aluminum foil. They grew their own vegetables and froze or canned what they couldn’t eat right away so they’d have food in the winter. They bought modest houses and made the children share bedrooms and even (gasp) sometimes made sisters share a bed.
Fast forward to my generation. When my husband and I bought our first home with an FHA loan, we had to jump through many hoops to be approved. My husband had to provide letters and other documentation about his overtime pay. I had to provide proof that I would indeed be a teacher again the following year. We did not know for sure if we were qualified until the day they called us to sign the papers. As frustrating as it was for us to keep providing “one more thing” to the loan company, I understood why they were being so cautious. We were first-time home buyers. We did not have established credit, and it would have been irresponsible of them to provide a loan to someone who they knew could not — or would not — pay it back.
Since that time, we have sold and bought four more houses. (Lots of cross country moves, you see.) Each time, it got easier and easier. I thought at the time this was because we’d established credit — and that’s probably part of it — but I know in retrospect that lenders were purposefully relaxing the rules and making risky loans. For example, before we even looked for a home, we called our lender to see how much of a loan we could afford. By our third house, they told me to first find a home and then come to them with the amount!
No wonder the housing market crashed.
Americans kept wanting bigger and bigger houses. We had to have extra bathrooms. Media rooms became all the rage…game rooms are great places to corral the kids. I’m not knocking down the American Dream of prosperity. I’m just trying to get a handle on MY part of this, from a godly perspective.
I’m squirming in my seat to read these words from Jesus in Luke 12:
When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required. I have come to set the world on fire, and I wish it were already burning! I have a terrible baptism of suffering ahead of me, and I am under a heavy burden until it is accomplished. Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to divide people against each other!
In light of the images captured on this short video,
I can see very vividly how people today are divided against each other. It’s not just Democrats vs. Republicans. That’s a very narrow view of the world. God sees us all. There is no Jew or Greek or master or slave or rich or poor in Christ. Many of these extremely poor people are believers…praise God! They have hope, and in God’s kingdom, they will be WAAAAYYY ahead of me. Many more are not believers. Can you imagine what it must be like to watch your own children starve to death right in front of your eyes without having God to lean upon? How do they do it?
The Lord requires much of me…because He gave so much…because He’s given me so much.
So, it’s back to the closet. I’m going to try to get organized. But what to do with the stuff I’m not going to keep? What do you do with the “junk” in your house?
Because I’ve always wanted to do a poll, this seems like as good a place as any to include one:
Perhaps if we all dug through our closets…and our cabinets…and our drawers…we’d find a new use for old stuff so we could, like our parents, learn to “make do” with what we have instead of running out and buying more. Better yet, maybe we can find someone in need — at church, through homeless shelters, through a friend of a friend — who would be very blessed to have our old stuff.
It is with great joy that I introduce the newest member of our “family.” Zulma is a beautiful ten year old girl who lives in Guatemala. She has two brothers and two sisters and lives with her mom and her dad. Her dad is an agriculture worker, and her mom stays home to take care of the family.
Recently our family took the step of sponsoring a child — Zulma — through World Vision. Those who have been following this blog know of our trouble to have more children and our struggles with should we or shouldn’t we adopt (me wanting to, my husband not ready yet). Zulma is one answer to our prayer! We will be supporting her financially each month, but more importantly, we’ll be establishing a relationship with her through emails, letters, photos, and prayers. My daughter has always wanted a sister; now she has one. My husband and daughter are already dreaming up a time when we can go visit her.
Why World Vision? Well, for starters, our church partners with them. For another, 87% of all donations go directly to the children. One of my dear friends, Holly, told me about child sponsorship over a year ago. I never forgot her shining eyes as she described the children she and her family support — and a little voice inside my head told me to get off my hind end and do something.
But what to do? When I mentioned it to my husband, he sort-of brushed off the idea. There are stories he’s heard of sponsorship companies that use most of their money to pay their executives and very little to the children. And then there are all the needy children in America. Wouldn’t it better to support “one of our own?”
In the end, it was our daughter’s curiosity and desire to help a child her age in need that turned the tide of our indecision. She and I looked at the website together. She picked Guatemala as the country because we have a dear friend who is originally from that country, and then we searched for a girl around ten years old. It was heartbreaking to see photos of so many children in need who fit our search criteria! I wished I could have selected every last one of them. But we prayed that God would show us the one girl he wanted us to love. As soon as we saw her picture, we both knew. Zulma is in our hearts forever. Just look at her smile!
It wasn’t until this weekend, however, that any of us understood the true need behind our sponsorship. Saturday there was a welcome packet from World Vision in our mailbox. Included in the packet was a DVD that did a great job explaining what it is exactly that World Vision does to support needy children and their communities.
Seeing the conditions in which others in our world live takes my breath away. Literally.
In Zulma’s part of the world, homes are made of clay bricks and tin sheets or with bamboo cane and straw roofs. Her entire house would probably fit inside one of the bedrooms of my house. The whole village shares a water faucet. Just yesterday at church I fussed at my daughter for drinking out of the water fountain at church. (My obsession with germs, you know. There’s a bug floating around at church that just won’t leave. I’m convinced it’s the kids putting their mouths around the fountains. But that’s another story.) My face burned last night as I watched a woman in Africa dipping water from a muddy seep hole in the ground into a large bucket. She came for water like this three times a day. Somehow, that tiny three-foot in diameter puddle provided water for six families…water that often gave them diarrhea, or worse. My germophobic tendencies are stopped in their tracks when I consider the way of life so many people across the world face every day. My standard of “clean” is something they would never even imagine.
So we began today with a different outlook on our lives and a new appreciation for what we have been given…and a new appreciation for the words in 1 John 3:
Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
I will post updates as I hear from Zulma. If our story is touching your heart and you’d like to learn more about how you can help, visit World Vision for yourself.
The new medicine has made my old dog somewhat more comfortable, but it is not a “cure-all.” He didn’t even try to get on the couch last night. And I’ve cleaned up two messes already today, so obviously it hasn’t helped with that end of him.
The vet said that if it’s going to help him regain control, it will within two weeks of beginning treatment.
Can I last that long? I seriously wanted to drop kick him into next week when I was in the middle of cleaning up our breakfast messes and saw that my little canine shadow was following me every step of the way, daintily avoiding stepping in the stuff he’d just dropped all over the floor. You gotta know it’s not like it’s just one “pile.” He doesn’t know he’s doing it, so it just drops down all over the place.
Homeschool had to get pushed back a few minutes while I picked up, scrubbed, and then bleached the floor.
When all this is over, this germ-a-phobe wants to have those crime scene cleaner-uppers come in and do their stuff on my tiles and especially the grout. Ugh!
My washing machine has more features than my car! I can do a second rinse, a soak, and a prewash. I can do laundry for light, medium, or heavy soil levels, and I can wash it cold/cold, cold/warm, warm/warm, and hot/cold. There’s a button on there that gives the clothes an extended spin. I can select Normal, Delicate, Handwash, Jeans, or Heavy Duty.
Trouble is, I pretty much use one setting, all the time. I always like our clothes washed in HOT water because I like the illusion of all the little germy germs getting washed away (although I know the heat from the dryer is good for that, too). I don’t own anything delicate, our jeans get thrown in with the towels, and everything is pretty much Heavy Duty.
What’s the point of washing “Normal” when you can have “Heavy Duty?” Who wants to dry their clothes on Air Dry when they can just hang them outside? No, give me 85 minutes on High Heat anyday.
Most days I do sort out the darks from the lights; rarely do I have an entire load of whites, so they get thrown in with the lights. I try to get through two loads of laundry a day just like I try to get in my quiet time every day.
And then when crisis comes, sometimes the two-loads-a-day gets thrown out the window. It might be a little crisis, like a newsletter deadline. Then I walk into the laundry room and grieve at the sight of a zillion loads of laundry piled on the floor, piled on top of the washer, and even in the sink. It literally stretches from wall to wall. Have you been there?
When that happens, I’ve found the best thing to do is to just get started without any expectation of being finished today. I sort the clothes, start a load, and close the door. Then in a little while I check back up on the progress, and, finding that load clean, I put it away and start another load. Sock by sock, t-shirt by towel, finally I get to the bottom of the pile without losing more than three socks. Success!
There are times when I ask the Lord to examine my heart that I really don’t like what I see. Old issues and new ones, fears, materialistic greed and strongholds have piled up again from wall to wall in my heart. And, like the real laundry room floor, the sight of all my shortcomings and sins grieves me.
With the state of my heart, I’m finding that the best thing to do is to just ask God to get started and to do my part without any expectation of being finished today. It’s so nice to know that I am a work in progress and that God doesn’t have to worry about which button to push in my life to get me going. He made me. He stitched me together and knows all about how much hot water I can stand. He knows when I need a cool, refreshing rinse, too. Perhaps the best part of all about my Jesus is that because of him, I am already clean…even when I’m not. When I get all grubby from my sinful old self, I just need to climb into his big old washing machine, confess, and then I emerge miraculously refreshed and clean.
But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.
1 John 1:9
Ah, to be cleansed from all wickedness! To be freshly washed, wrapped up in a clean, toasty towel, sweet smelling and relaxed…
I set out to write this blog with nothing on my mind but the laundry. Isn’t it cool what God does with our words? All glory to you, my God, the God of this city, of this world, of this universe. I praise you and lift up your name, for you are mighty and able to save. Thank you for the saving grace found in the blood of Jesus. When our clothes get soiled with blood, we quickly wash them to remove the stain…but with your blood, we want it washing over us always and forever. It turns our clothes white…it removes the red from us like bleach removes stains from our clothes.
Let us not just have a reputation for being ‘Christian’ in this world. Let us BE Christians!
“I know all the things you do, and that you have a reputation for being alive—but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what little remains, for even what is left is almost dead. I find that your actions do not meet the requirements of my God. Go back to what you heard and believed at first; hold to it firmly. Repent and turn to me again. If you don’t wake up, I will come to you suddenly, as unexpected as a thief.
“Yet there are some in the church in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes with evil. They will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. All who are victorious will be clothed in white. I will never erase their names from the Book of Life, but I will announce before my Father and his angels that they are mine.
“Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches.
Revelation 3:1-6
When my brother and I were kids with smart mouths that sometimes said words kids (and adults!) have no business saying, our parents brought out the Ivory soap and gave us an appreciation of the value in telling the truth.
I’m here to tell you today that we need a big old bar of Ivory soap to wash out the filth pouring out of politicians’ mouths these days. (Fair warning to McCain supporters — this blog is not a partisan blog today. I’ve been doing some checking, and angry is too mild a word to describe the way I’m feeling at the moment about our entire political process with both mainstream political parties.)
In fact, I’m thinking of striking up a new party. Let’s call ourselves the Honestarians. We tell the truth. There are no lies or half lies. Strange notion, huh? Who ever heard of an honest politician? It’s actually a joke among us that our elected leaders are corrupted. After all, that’s part of the fun, right?
Consider the words of “Honest Abe,” who really did seek to earn the respect of the fellow men who he served:
Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition…I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.”
In fact, President Lincoln believed honesty to be such a virtue that he counseled those studying to be lawyers that if they realized they could not be honest lawyers, then they should not be lawyers at all.
Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer.
I propose we slap Lincoln’s words across every newspaper and blog in the nation, only this time we substitute “politician” for “lawyer.” If in your own judgment you cannot be an honest politician, resolve to be honest without being a politician. Drop out of the race. Today.
McCain should fire every staff member who has written speeches for him and created ads for him that smack of anything dishonest…and there are plenty of them. Likewise, Obama has a lot of house cleaning to do if he wants to rise above politics as usual and, for once, speak plainly and truly to the American people.
Wake up! We are the ones wandering along like sheep, taking in whatever we hear on the news or read in the papers or on the internet as fact. We are letting both campaigns get away with downright lies. Those of us Christians who are McCain supporters need to demand accountability, just as Obama supporters need to demand accountability of their candidate. The media is falling down on the job — it is doing precious little to counteract the lies the campaigns tell. And when we fall for it hook, line and sinker, we fall down on our job.
But one person with pen and paper, or with a telephone, or with a computer and internet connection can bring about change for the greater good. After you read the lies I’m getting ready to expose, I highly suggest you get on the phone or the internet and contact the candidate you support. Demand that the campaign come clean and threaten to withhold your vote if they don’t.
The Lord detests lying lips. Period. I cannot in good conscience vote for a candidate who spins the truth and varnishes the warts to try to come off looking perfect. I want the facts — the true facts, not the ones that are taken out of context.
To be fair, I will begin with just a few of the lies, half-truths, and deceptions running amok in both campaigns. There are so many that I can’t possibly write them here. Nonpartisan and nonprofit group FactCheck.org has been following the whoppers of the campaigns and has already compiled so many that they have issued a special “Whoppers of 2008″ edition — and the election is still one month and one day away. Granted, you can’t rely on everything you read online. I tried to use examples that had corroborating evidence and weren’t just statements of left-leaning opinion.
McCain’s Smoke and Mirrors
McCain says Obama will raise your taxes
McCain has said that Obama would raise taxes on people earning $32K a year and has run an ad claiming that Obama wants an energy tax. According to FactCheck.org, Obama has not proposed new taxes for gas or oil. The quote the McCain campaign used was from an interview Obama did with the San Antonio Express-News. He was asked how he would fund education, and the reporter suggested taxing alternative fuels. Obama said that he would rather tax “dirty” energy sources but then went on to say that education needs to be a priority at the local level. The reporter is the one who mentioned taxing energy, not Obama. Obama did vote for a budget resolution that would have raised taxes on a single person earning $41,500 a year and on couples earning $83,00 a year, but those are not in his current tax plan. McCain’s $32K figure is actually taxable income, which is different than total income. I can only assume McCain and his staffers latched on to the $32K figure because it painted Obama in a worse light…but it’s not completely true. Why couldn’t they have honestly used the real numbers? The Tax Policy Center says that under Obama’s plan, 81.3 percent of American families would see tax cuts (and not 90%, as Obama claims). McCain should focus his energies on discussing the other 19.7% of households who would see rises in their taxes. I would assume that these people vote, too.
McCain: Obama thinks Iran isn’t a problem
In this case, the McCain campaign took a statement Obama made and completely twisted it around. McCain has said that Obama said Iran was “tiny” and “didn’t pose a serious threat.” Actually, Obama said Iran was tiny compared with the Soviet Union and doesn’t pose as serious a threat as the Soviet Union’s thousands of nuclear weapons posed a threat.
McCain and Palin: Alaska produces 20% of nation’s energy supply and 20% of nation’s oil and gas supply
Again, according to FactCheck.org, these are false statements. The truth? Alaska provides 3.5% of energy supply and 7.4% of our nation’s oil and gas supply. Alaska did produce 14% of the nation’s oil last year, but that is not the nation’s energy supply. Why not use the real figures and terminology instead of inflating them and distorting them? It’s difficult enough for Joe Six Pack to understand meaning of “domestic energy production” vs “percentage of oil from all US oil wells.” (there is a difference, but I couldn’t tell you what it is! If you’d said the truth in the first place, you wouldn’t end up with egg on your face).
Alaska’s Bridge to Nowhere
Governor Palin came out strong in her acceptance speech, telling America that Alaskans shunned pork barrel politics by saying “Thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. Actually, Palin supported the legislation that would have provided for that bridge when she was campaigning for Governor. The Bridge would have gone to a sparsely populated area, but it connected with an airport. Palin thought at the time that it would have been a good thing for Alaska. (Biden and Obama both voted for it.) Then the legislation was changed, and Alaska was given the funds but the requirement that the funds be tied to the bridge was stripped from the language. So as Governor, Palin had the money from the feds but chose not to use it for the bridge because it wasn’t enough to cover the cost. Alaska used the money for other infrastructure projects. That in itself was not dishonest. But to stand up and imply that she turned down the federal money because it was a pork barrel project? That’s just not true.
McCain on Obama’s education ‘accomplishment’
A McCain ad claims that Obama’s one education accomplishment was legislation to teach ‘comprehensive sex ed’ to kindergarteners. What McCain left out was that the bill also said the education was to be ‘age-appropriate.’ The outright lie is that this was Obama’s ONE education accomplishment. For one thing, the legislation died. For another, Obama did not sponsor or co-sponsor or write it. How can something that wasn’t done be labeled an accomplishment? As a US Senator, Obama sponsored 3 amendments to the America Competes legislation that have become law — one creates a mentoring program for women and minority groups as they study in Department of Energy programs, one supports summer learning programs, and the other requires women and minorities to be included in the President’s Science and Technology Summit. Rather than scare-mongering about sex ed, McCain could have gone after Obama for his co-sponsoring of Illinois legislation that would have allowed high school graduates be eligible for in-state tuition even if they weren’t US citizens.
Obama’s Smoke and Mirrors
Obama: McCain will take away and privatize social security benefits
According to FactCheck.org, this is one of the big ObamaWhoppers. McCain agreed with Bush’s social security plan…which would not have cut benefits for anyone who gets a check now or who is nearing retirement. Obama has been all over the economic crisis, claiming over and over that if McCain had his way to privatize social security, people’s benefits would have crashed in the recent plunge in the stock market. This is also untrue and is a scare tactic aimed at the little old lady who gets all her news and knowledge from the campaign advertisements. The Bush plan that McCain supported would not have allowed anyone born before 1950 to privatize any amount of their social security, so anyone currently receiving social security benefits would not have been touched by the market crash at all.
Obama plays with numbers
Obama says that McCain took 2 million dollars in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. At that time, he was wrong by 700K. (Even my fourth grader knows that when you are rounding numbers, 1.3 million is rounded down to 1 million…not rounded up to 2 million.) Like McCain, Obama’s campaign would be better served if they used actual figures rather than puffing them up to make them fit into the image. Obama also accuses McCain of planning to give $4 Billion in tax cuts to oil companies. This is also a half-truth — the corporate tax cuts are across the board, not specifically devoted to oil companies. Obama has also said that his own tax plan would cut taxes for 90% of Americans — yet the smarties who analyze economic plans have said his plan would cut taxes for 81.3% of Americans. Once again a problem with rounding up when it would have been better to just leave the figure alone.
Obama: McCain will stay in Iraq 100 years
According to FactCheck.org, McCain’s statement was taken out of context. McCain was referring to American troops having a peacetime presence in an area such as we now have in Korea…not in a war, as Obama ominously implies. And people in America who are tired of the war latch on to his misleading “100 years” comment end up thinking that McCain is a hawk who would have America still shooting from tanks 100 years from now.
Obama: McCain muddling through
Obama claims that McCain said America would just “muddle through” the problems in Afghanistan. Again, he took McCain’s words out of context. In fact, in 2003 McCain said America “may” muddle through because there are areas in Afghanistan that are “dicey” and aren’t under the control of either the Afghan or Pakistan governments. He said he was “guardedly optimistic” but also as a realist he knew that the Afghan government had little power over the warlords operating on the border. (and we now know he was right as trouble has sprung up all along the border.) Both candidates have recently supported sending more troops to Afghanistan, but Obama said that only he supported more troops while McCain supported “muddling through” the problems. Again, that’s a lie.
Obama says McCain is a Bush Clone
Obama accuses McCain of voting along party lines (the anti-maverick) 90% of the time. Senator McCain has voted with Bush an average of 89% of the time, but it varied year-by-year. In 2005, he voted with him 77% of the time. But Barack fails to mention that he himself voted along the party lines an average of 97%. Hmmm. If we’re talking about real change coming to Washington, tell us where you would deviate from lines. Give us some examples of ways in which YOU would be a political maverick instead of criticizing McCain.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of lies, half-truths, and deceptions from both of these candidates. You can read about plenty more at FactCheck.org, if you have the stomach for it. If you are fed up, then let them know about it. If enough of us “Joe Six Packs” and Homeschoolers and Conservative Christians and Christian Liberals cry foul, maybe the candidates will rise above the filth they find themselves in.
We aren’t the only generation that must deal with leaders who lie to get what they want. From Psalms 12:
Therefore, Lord, we know you will protect the oppressed,
preserving them forever from this lying generation,
even though the wicked strut about,
and evil is praised throughout the land.
Clearly lying is something that Jesus was concerned about because it speaks to the condition of a person’s heart.
Then Jesus called to the crowd to come and hear. “Listen,” he said, “and try to understand. It’s not what goes into your mouth that defiles you; you are defiled by the words that come out of your mouth.” Matthew 15:10-11
I would much rather my candidate tell the truth and lose than lie in order to win the election. How can my faith justify the lies my candidate is putting out in the media? This conservative is fed up with the whoppers both candidates are making and getting away with right and left.
Earlier in my blog I encouraged you to contact the candidate you support. I will do the same — but to get some extra attention, I’m going to send my letter along with a picture of a bar of Ivory soap. (Remember the old ad campaign…it’s so pure, it floats!) If you do the same, maybe they’ll get the message. Reform for Washington starts right now, and it starts with telling the truth not just some of the time. Not just a conservative or liberal’s version of the truth, but the real truth, all of the time.
We’ll call it the Ivory Soap Campaign.
If you agree with me, send your candidate a picture of Ivory soap and a scathing letter demanding the truth. When you’ve done so, leave me a comment. Do you think five letters with images of soap will draw some attention? How about fifty? A hundred? Here is a link to the letter I wrote today to Senator McCain. Feel free to use it for yourself, but be sure to put your own information on it!
Here are links to the candidate’s addresses:
(Obama’s campaign says it will only accept envelopes size #10. All others will be returned. So if you’re sending him a letter with a picture of soap, make sure it fits in the standard envelope.)
Tell your candidate you want some honest, clean debate, and not the dishonest sound bites that have become politics-as-usual. It’s time for some real reform, today.
A few times a week I have Cadi help me clean up the dog toys. The other day she had the great idea to stick Lacee in the basket with the toys! Now that is REALLY cleaning up! 
Yes, I do have a “toy box” for the dogs. What does that say about me???
Isn’t there something beautiful about a house that is clean? Or, if you’re like me, even having one clean spot to rest my eyes on is like a breeze to my spirit. Since we’ve been living in Texas we have been so blessed to have a homeschool family come over and help us out with the cleaning every other week. The whole atmosphere of the house changes when order reigns over chaos. I feel better. Cadi studies better without so many distractions. Even Jon notices and appreciates a clean slate.
Don’t we all? Jesus spoke of cleanliness several times in his ministry. I am such a stickler about germs and keeping my kitchen counters and dishes clean that I cringe and identify myself with the Pharisees in this encounter in Luke 11 –
As Jesus was speaking, one of the Pharisees invited him home for a meal. So he went in and took his place at the table. His host was amazed to see that he sat down to eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony required by Jewish custom.
I wonder…was he starving and just HAD to eat? Or was he proving a point?
Then the Lord said to him, ‘You Pharisees are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy — full of greed and wickedness! Fools! Didn’t God make the inside as well as the outside? So clean the inside by giving gifts to the poor, and you will be clean all over.’
Now, I am not Jewish, and I do not have a ceremony per se, but in our house we WASH our hands before we eat! Cadi has known since she was a toddler that before we eat, our hands get clean. It’s a common-sense thing. It’s something doctors and scientists tell us to do to prevent the spread of diseases and germs.
But Jesus wasn’t speaking about the diseases that can be spread from person to person. He used this opportunity to speak to the diseases within our characters. He was talking about talking the talk but not walking the walk. Can you imagine sitting down to dinner with the Lord Jesus and having him tell you that you are filthy — filled with greed and wickedness? But I love my Jesus — he always gives constructive criticism. He followed up by telling them how they could get clean, on the inside of their hearts, not just on the surface of their hands: by giving to the poor.
Because I am a Christ-follower, I have been washed clean by his blood, Praise God! But I still have to deal daily with the fleshly fears, concerns, and habits that are entrenched in my sinful nature. (Speaking of clean, do you typically think of blood as being clean? If I cut myself shaving and get blood on my white pants, I quickly grab the Clorox bleach pen! But God required blood sacrifice as atonement for the sins of the people…someone had to die. Wow – I get choked up whenever I think about the One he sent to die for my filthiness, for my greed, for my wickedness. His ONLY son. I have an ONLY, too. I cannot fathom the vastness of his love for us. If you’ve seen the movie The Passion and read the accounts of Jesus’ last hours on earth, you know his death was bloody. No amount of Clorox could wipe away the stain, the grief, the pain that he took on his own body.)
Sometimes I have to remind myself that I have been cleaned. I get down on myself, I berate myself; I am great at put-downs when they concern me and my many failures. I cry out CLEAN ME, Lord! And I’m in good company. Here’s what this hero of the faith, David, wrote:
“Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Oh, give me back my joy again; you have broken me — now let me rejoice. Don’t keep looking at my sins. Remove the stain of my guilt. Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me. Do not banish me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you.” Psalm 51:7-12
I guess I could say — Keep On Cleaning Me, Lord! It’s wise to take stock of our own vessels and see what’s on the inside, with help from the Holy Spirit. I leave you with this morsel from Jeremiah:
“But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence. They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit. The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.”
How can I keep on being clean? Trust in the Lord, and make him my hope and my confidence. This is not to say that in the Lord’s eyes I am ever unclean — I am sealed, I am His. But when I get in the driver’s seat instead of letting go and trusting God to do the driving for me, I sometimes run into a ditch. It gets pretty muddy down there. I praise Him that He reaches down, picks me back up, WASHES MY FEET, and gets me started down the road again.
I’ll chew on that the next time Shiner tracks in muddy pawprints all over the carpet. After the huge sacrifice Christ made for me, cleaning my house, my sinks, my toilets — and my dog toys — are all opportunities to reflect on and praise his love, his mercy, and his glory.
