Photo courtesy of Mr.Clean.comIf this post makes no sense, forgive me. I have been in a cleaning FRENZY today. We are having company tomorrow (my mother-in-law) and are VERY excited for her to visit. On Thursday, we will have Christmas dinner for 14 in our home. I know this is fewer than many of you host over the holidays, but it's a full 10 people more than what WE'RE used to. I have written before about my dislike for cleaning and my HATE for clutter. I do, however, like to have a neat and clean house when people are visiting us. So..........I emailed DH today at work and asked him to pick up some Magic Erasers on the way home. I wanted to tackle the smudges in the stairwell (as well as many, many other cleaning tasks, lest you think those were the biggest of my cleaning woes).
When he got home, I immediately asked for the package, ripped it open and got to work. I ended up totally using up a whole Magic Eraser just on our stairwell. There were only flimsy little pieces left when I was done. I am also going to admit that I haven't been in a very good mood today. Cleaning and clutter make me grumpy. I know I need an attitude adjustment about it; however, that hasn't happened yet (unfortunately). So even though I was determined to Magic Erase the stairwell, I was less than happy about doing it. And then as I was about halfway up the stairs and thus 3/4 of the way finished, it hit me.......HARD! God's mercy and love are just like the Magic Eraser. God is able to swoop in and clean up the subtle, yet insidious mess that is our spiritual selves and make it clean again. I say subtle mess because I fully realize that outwardly people don't always show their hidden "dirt". That is the dirt that instead rears its ugly head around the people who know us best....our families and closest friends. (In my case, my dirt is that I sometimes have less patience than I should, I snap at the people I love instead of speaking gently, and the list could truly go on and on, but I'll spare you. I usually hide these ugly behaviors when I am in public, however.) Similarly, I am pretty sure that anyone walking up my stairwell prior to the Magic Erasing may not have seen all the little dings and drips and stains. Yet they were there in plain sight. I was also struck by the fact that just as the Magic Eraser leaves behind little bits of itself in the cleaning process (thus the disintegration), so does God leave bits of Himself behind when he cleans us up. All this revelation didn't necessarily make me enjoy the cleaning more, but it humbled me tremendously. I am certainly in need of some good Magic Eraser power today as well as any other day on the calendar. So my wish for today is that I learn to appreciate the cleaning powers of God and that I try to create less of a mess for Him to clean up!!
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