cleaning the unknown dirty

Today, Jim and I participated in the exciting sabbath activity of cleaning the cabinets in the kitchen. It was actually more joyful than it sounds--good time with my husband--and the realization that I am becoming more and more like my mother was less than painful than it used to be.

As we almost finished the cleaning, Jim says to me something like, "it's funny how the cabinets can get so dirty and you never notice it." I thought about how true that is. How that is true of sin in our lives--whether it is choices that we make--to continue to disregard God's desires for us--or the sin that is committed against us--like oppression, abuse, neglect. We become immune to it's effects on our lives. Slowly the grime of selfish actions builds until it finally gets noticed--often not by ourselves.

It takes fresh eyes to see how the grime has built on our hearts. It often doesn't happen over night. It often takes someone who cares enough to pause and look.

And I look at the grime of the cabinets and there is also a positive.

The picture above is of the last cabinet that we cleaned. The dirt around the handle not as visible as on the other cabinets before their purging of dirt, grime and grease that built up after years of use. In that dirt are memories of little kids' hands, dogs jumping up in an effort to reach food that was not intended for them, countless numbers of home cooked meals, and homemade stained-glass (AKA shrinky-dinks). That dirt tells a story, too.

Our scars are often like that-- they show moments of where life has gotten dirty--where we have pain and yet they heal and in them we can see a blessing. The scar that shows that we survived cancer or that we got a new knee. When the time is right, we might be willing to show our scars... to show the world that we made it.

As for my cabinets they are clean.  My rags however, will probably have to be thrown away. There is a cost to being made clean again. How appropriate that it was Easter dish towel that paid the price for cleanliness.