Prepare yourself for a painfully honest view of my life this past week. It was not pretty.
I toss Kleenex ® number 4,289 in the trash can, and I move my clogged head sluggishly around to survey the damage. Crumbs remain scattered on the table (and the floor and the counters, but whatever) yet they are hardly noticeable compared to the dishes that have taken over not just the sink, but the entire kitchen. How is it humanly possible to have so many toy trails going in one humble little house? I mean really.
I shake my head and walk into my room to escape the mounds of filth that do their best to haunt me. Instead I’m greeted by an unmade bed and clothes piled up around the bedroom, laundry basket neglected. Don’t even get me started on the closet. I’m having a garage sale this spring: I promise.
I cannot escape the messes that happened when our family was just too sick to function. This is one phenomenon that has never ceased to amaze me. If we’re too weak to take care of the messes that inevitably pile up when sickness invades our home, how are we strong enough to make them in the first place?
It’s just like our human nature to physically live out what we so often allow to take place in our hearts, isn’t it?
When we allow sin to invade our home, it takes on a power all its own. We lose our drive to clean up the excess and throw out the unnecessary and, in exchange, wallow in the pain that has taken over our entire beings. Before we know it, that tickle in our throats has morphed into a debilitating disease that consumes us. We try to pray, but the headache is too intense to think clearly. We know what needs to be done to keep things running smoothly around the house, but the couch beckons with promises of giving us uninterrupted opportunity to sit and wallow in our misery.
No matter how frustrated or embarrassed we may get at the condition of our homes at this point, we are powerless to do anything about it until we begin to climb out of the clutches of the illness. There’s one incredible difference between this illness of sin and the physical illnesses that accompany winter – you control when the sin has to leave. Instead of being forced to endure the indefinite amount of time one must take for a virus to run its course, sin has to leave when we confess it to God and repent of our choice to embrace it.
We don’t have to walk around powerless in a zombie-like state of sin for forever. We have been given the victory if we will just make the choice to live it out.
1 Corinthians 15:55-57 puts it all very well:
“O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. “
Once we kick that nasty sin virus out of our homes and lives, the aftermath will require some serious clean-up, just like my poor house does now that we’re all healthy again. I do find freedom, and even joy, in getting to work on the mess because I know it will all be worth it to not have to stumble in the rubble. God has promised me it will be worth it, and I know that it can only be a million times better than being miserable.
1 Corinthians 15:58
“Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
A little bit about Kelly:
Allow me to introduce you to a little bit of what makes up me. I’m a follower of Jesus. He’s been a part of my vocabulary my entire life due to the faithful teaching of my amazing parents, and He became a part of my life when I was a young girl. I didn’t have everything about Him figured out then, but I knew that I was a sinner in desperate need of a Savior. In the beautiful way that God has designed relationships, I didn’t have to know everything about God to start building that kinship, and I certainly have much more to figure out two decades later, but Jesus and I are growing closer with each day that I live.
Learn more about Kelly at Exceptionally Average.
This was such an interesting perspective! I love the line about if we find ourselves too weak to deal with messes, how were we strong enough to make them? I’m going to have to meditate on that one for a while.