Cleaning Out Your Life

I had a spare hour today and decided to do some brief dusting and polishing in my apartment. Not an ardent cleaner in any way, mostly because I find better things to do than because I’m not capable of it, it’s a rare occasion that I finally pick up the rag. I finished dusting the countertops and furniture relatively fast, and then looked at the front of my stove. It had a few greasy spots on it here and there, so I proceeded to try and get rid of them. As I was working my way through the annoying little dots, my roommate, sitting a few feet away asked what the heck I am doing. "I’m cleaning the little spots," I replied. “Well, you should look at it from here girl, cuz there’s a lot more on that stove than you’re seeing!” I went over to where she was sitting and looked at the stove. The light was hitting it to reveal stains of grease not visible to the naked eye from where I was standing before. That’s why I missed it all. And that’s why my scrubbing of the little dots seemed ridiculous to her.

I sat down in front of the stove and started polishing off the grease. The cleaning game quickly sucked me in, because now my perspective revealed nooks and corners of the stove that I never paid attention to before and therefore never cleaned. They were full of grease, dirt, and dry leftovers of what once was food. The more I cleaned, the more I realized that there is more cleaning to do. The shining stove now didn’t mesh well with the walls and drawers nearby that had stains on them too. It was becoming a never ending job which would probably take an entire day to take care of! And just to think that only an hour before I didn’t even realize that all that dirt, dust, grease and stains existed!

Our lives are a lot like a dirty kitchen. Occasionally we dust the countertops, and to us it appears as though everything is perfect now. We might even notice the spots if we look a little deeper and start getting rid of them, only to seem ridiculous to the onlookers because we are missing the big mess. It takes the light of God shining on our lives, along with a different perspective spoken by our brothers and sisters in Christ, to realize that we’re stained with grease not visible to the naked eye. And the more we clean, the more we become aware of how much more there is to work on. It’s a long process that takes time and a lot of hard work, as some stains take a lot more than a rag with warm water to clean out. But the end result is a sparkling clean life, pleasing to the eye not just from the top, but from all angles and perspectives.