Consider yourself for a moment to be like a messy house. For some of us that is no stretch of the imagination! There is cleaning and there is cleaning. Cleaning in the first sense is nothing more than shoving things into drawers, maybe wiping down a countertop or two, removing the trash from the kitchen. You know, the kind of “cleaning” you do when you’re expecting someone to drop by. Then there’s cleaning. Put on the rubber gloves, scrub every surface, dust under and behind every movable object, Mom’s coming to visit cleaning. We are all messy houses in the eyes of God. The good news is, we don’t have to do the cleaning! If we allow Him, God will go through our “house” with rubber gloves, scrub and wipe us clean, rearrange our “mental furniture.” Then our body becomes a temple again, free and clean to follow Christ. This is abundant, and ultimately easy, life. Faith gets us through the dirty laundry, overflowing trash cans, streaked mirrors, and overall messiness of our lives. Every day, every moment that Jesus was doing his ministry among us, he was eyeball-deep in our muck and mire. He knows intimately our every weakness, sadness, failure, success, searching, indulgence, work, rest and anxiety. The redemption he offers and brought is infinitely more than a mere transaction, a divine equation. Jesus came to redeem all manner of travail, evil, and trouble. It is an ongoing, continuous action. Pause for a moment or two throughout the day and say to yourself: God is here. The awareness of His presence is the very essence and nature of prayer.

Picking up again on the analogy of a messy house, it can be considered as if you have just cleaned it. You sit back in your favorite comfortable chair with the exhaustion but also the accomplishment. Everything is in order. We can also leave ourselves to God in our messy arguments, usually about politics. When Jesus is in the center, there is balance. What would be the harm if, when feeling yourself heading into the pit, the quagmire of argument, you paused quickly to say, “let’s pray.” With the Spirit of God invoked and present, there is wisdom, sanity, reconciliation.

We each have our work to do, even if it’s just shoving things into drawers for the cleaning person. Even if we are retired. No one can clean our messy house the way Jesus can. He frees us from the paralysis of analysis. We surrender to “Mr. Clean.” We leave ourselves to God. We are free to accept His unconditional love.

Pastor Art