Jn. 13:34
I was standing at the sink washing dishes, thinking about my next few tasks (bathing the toddler, sweeping the floor, and doing a load of laundry) when I realized it was all basically the same thing: cleaning up the messes of this dirty world.
I paid attention all week. It was everywhere. Mess, things gone wrong, disappointments. Things shattered, reduced to crumbs, or just coated in dust. The spider creeping along the edge my living room. The money needs that hound endlessly. The arguments. The culture that's yanking even the most basic morality out by the roots. The grime that we cannot escape, smeared over every situation and decision and relationship.
We drag ourselves through this world, cleaning up messes as we go along, and all the while watching more and more things fall apart.
I see it in myself, too. Just when I think I'm making progress - becoming more patient, learning to listen better, actually remembering what I read in my morning devotions - I see three more areas where I'm utterly failing. I still really hate that person. I remain bitter and jealous about that situation. I entirely lack a heart of faith about that decision. I can't get myself clean enough, even though I sweep up again every day.
Though it appears this way, it's actually not true. Contrary to every single other thing on this planet, which is in a constant state of decay and breakdown, my soul has the option of being in a state of improvement. Of course, this is only because my soul is linked to Christ. With each passing hour, the world slides farther and farther away from the perfection in which it was made. But by God's grace, I am inching closer and closer toward the second perfection, the one that will never end.
This doesn't end the struggle. I still need a broom and a bottle of windex, and bug killer with a 20-foot spray range, and a buffer zone in the checking account, and the humility to apologize because there are still messes to clean up every day. But slowly (so slowly!), I am being made more like Christ and the eternal perfection of Heaven comes closer as He changes me. Stacked between the ordinary moments are the ones where I get to see a hint of this.
So consider this, the next time a bottle of soda splits open on your kitchen floor, or you're stuck on the highway with a shard of glass in your tire, or you're tied to a hospital room with plastic tubes, or you hear about another dirty politician who's laid a trail of lies. Consider that even the most filthy and torn-up parts of this world will someday be made new. Consider that your heart could already be on the upswing, though the earth groans with the waiting. Consider that every opportunity to clean something up is a chance to do in a tiny way what God is doing in a huge way: bringing purity and wholeness to what's defiled and broken. Be grateful to have been given a piece of that work.
Grateful this week for:
fall leaves on the road
afternoon light
new nail polish
a meal in the crockpot
a good ballpoint pen
a lesson from Romans 6
bargains at the consignment sale
scampering of a baby goat
corn chex
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