As I sit here feeling clean, peaceful, happy and fulfilled,
I can’t help but ask myself the question.
Why didn’t I do this earlier?
This week was Spring Break for our school district and I’ve
had the house pretty much to myself all week.
Donna and I took the boys to West Monroe last weekend and came home
Sunday, but then Donna went back on Thursday, leaving me the house all to
myself for the rest of the week!
Now, you know as well as I do, leaving a man at home by himself
to basically do what he wants is sometimes an un-wise thing to do. Yes, we don’t wash clothes, we don’t put our
dishes away, we make big messes and we don’t clean up after ourselves. We make meals and don’t clean the
dishes. We get dirty from being outside
and we take our clothes off and throw them in the floor. We track in mud from being in the yard that’s
muddy as a swamp from all the rain. We
leave our junk food wrappers on the floor in the TV room and our empty milk
glasses on the desk. We make
messes…we’re free!! Or we think we are
anyway.
Well, as free as I was to create the mess, I was obligated
to also clean the mess up. I made it, I
had to clean it. It was at this point I
realized, I should have cleaned up after I made the mess. That way, I wouldn’t have so much to do prior
to everyone getting home.
That was another problem.
I procrastinated! Procrastination
of cleaning only made the job that much harder to do. The filth had built up until there was
so much to clean that I didn’t know where to start. So, I started in our room and worked my way
into the kitchen.
I picked up my clothes and put them in the hamper, I folded and hung up the laundry that I had washed earlier, I
dusted and I vacuumed throughout the entire house. Then I went into the kitchen. I put up all the leftover food, I wiped off
the counters and cleaned the stove top, I put all the boxes I had pulled out
back into the cabinet and I washed off the dishes and loaded them into the
dishwasher. By the way, I think that’s
the dumbest thing to do…why can’t they make a dishwasher that you don’t have to
wash the dish prior to loading, but that’s another story for another day.
After I cleaned the kitchen, I thought about the
floors. I got the broom and dust pan and
swept the floor, and then I mopped it. I
looked at the kitchen and thought I was finished and realized I had one more
thing to do before I’d be complete. I
had to take out the trash.
As I sealed the bag and carried it to the can, I realized
that I was through with the task of cleaning.
I also realized that it didn’t take me near as long as I thought it
would. However, I was glad I was
done. I could sit down and relax for a
little while.
I don’t think I’ve answered the question of why I felt
happy, peaceful and fulfilled. Here’s
why. I got finished with everything
prior to Donna and the boys getting home.
They’ll come home to a nice clean, fresh smelling home. They wouldn’t have to do one thing, but
unload from their trip and relax when they got home. No cleaning, no washing, no loading the
dishwasher, because it was all done. Knowing
that they would be able to relax and spend time with me made me feel good. It made me happy! I felt like I had accomplished something that
they would be proud of me over. I felt
complete and fulfilled over something that I knew they would be happy
about.
This got me thinking.
I wonder if we treat our sins the same way.
We all know that Jesus is coming back, we just don’t know
when. We play in the world and fill our
lives with stuff that we know He wouldn’t like, hoping that He doesn’t come
back and find us kicked back in our easy chairs, while our hearts are filled
with dirt that we could have and should have already had cleaned.
Will He come and find that we’ve left old clothes of deceit
lying around, carpet filled with iniquity un-vacuumed, and dishes with remnants
of bad habits lying on the cabinets of our heart?
You know as well as I do, at some point you’re going to have
to get the mess cleaned up. I’ve heard
our Pastor say many times, “Jesus can do anything, but He’s not going to
everything”. We have to make up our
minds that we don’t want to live in the filth any longer. We have to be the ones to start the process
of cleaning and that first step is asking to be forgiven.
Just like I felt good about Donna and the boys coming home,
when we ask Jesus to forgive us and we let Him clean our hearts, we too can
feel good about His returning.
He is coming. One day
real soon He’ll come to get us. You
ready? You can be! Don’t Procrastinate!
Just something to think about…
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