Cleaning Up

Yesterday I was cleaning my room. No matter how many times I clean that room, it just keeps getting messy again. Those piles of laundry keep making the room messy! Anyway, I was thinking about how similar this is to our Christian life. We need to be continually cleaning. No matter how many times I repent and “clean up” my life, sin always comes back and makes a mess of it. In all honesty, it’s not the laundry’s fault my room is messy; It’s my fault. And the sin is my fault too.

I have a tendency to let my room stay messy for a while before taking care of it. My little brother told me that if I work on keeping it clean every day it would be easier. He’s right. This applies to my relationship with God also. I need to come to God and repent continually. The longer I let things pile up the harder it is to take care of them . . .to get rid of the sin. Some things have sat on my carpet for a while slowly leaking. The longer the item sits, the bigger and deeper the stain. My heart is the same way. The longer I leave sin undealt with, the more irreparable scarring it causes. The mess is long gone, but the damage has already been done. It’s too late to fix the carpet. That stain will be there as long as the carpet is. I can’t change that, but I can look back to see where the problem started, and see that letting it sit only made it worse; and hopefully I’ll learn not to put that lotion on the floor next time. The scars left by sin will be there as long as I live, but hopefully I’ll learn to take care of the sin as soon as I see it. It seems to me that is what will be most glorifying to God. After all, isn’t that our goal in life?