“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
When I was in high school, my father demanded that our house remain clean at all times. We dusted, vacuumed, and mopped so much you could eat off the floor. It was so extreme that we had plastic runners on the floor protecting parts of the carpet. All visitors were instructed to only walk on the areas that were covered.
I was trained to keep daddy's house clean come what may. At first, my friends balked at me for yelling at them about not walking on the floor or sitting on the bed. It didn't matter though. I knew Herbert Lee didn't play. He expected the house to be spotless so I did what I had to to keep it that way.
I didn't realize then that my natural father and my spiritual father had the same thoughts about how to keep a house. My dad wanted me to keep his house clean just like my Father wanted me to keep His house, my body, clean.
Sadly I did not. I allowed the house my Father gave me to live in to accumulate dirt while I meticulously attended to the house my dad chose for us to live in. I scrubbed and cleaned. Dusted and vacuumed. Not once did I open the windows of my Father's house. Not once did I air out the dirt that I was pushing around from one room to the next.
My daddy's house always looked clean because my Father's house, my body, was the dirt warehouse. All of the grime resided on the inside of me. And though I spent all of those years cleaning up the dirt in my daddy's house, I hadn't bothered to lift a finger to clean my Father's. I hadn't bothered to remain faithful to God.
I used my mouth to curse, to gossip, and to lie. I prayed, but my thoughts were so divided between my wants and God's desires. I used my daddy's house to pollute my Father's temple. I stayed up late reading romance novels or watching R rated movies because they contained sex, but scarcely would my eyes connect with the bible. But there I was, polishing furniture until it shined. So proud that I'd made my dad happy and kept the house clean. My dad was beaming and my Father was weeping because I understood the principle, but missed the real lesson about cleaning house.
1 Corinthians 6:19 NIV
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
Adayinthelife:-)
No comments:
Post a Comment