WON'T HE MAKE YOU CLEAN
Close Encounters with the Real Stain-Lifter
(I wrote this originally for a campus staff vesper, and sent it to Adventist View [soon to have a web site at http://www.cyberview.adventist.org] and it was accepted. As I got my copy of the magazine today, I thought I would share the article with you all. Enjoy! =) As I edited my online version to conform with what was actually printed, I realised the true value of editors... Thanks, Celeste =) )
Clean. The word has a ring to it ... like the smell of an untouched meadow, the sight of a freshly mowed lawn, the fragrance of freshly washed clothes. There’s something about clean that inspires me. You see, there’s so little “clean” in our world. As I walk around Caribbean Union College campus, up Maracas Royal Road, down in Port-of-Spain, West Indies, my constant companion is garbage, clutter, pieces of the refuse of life strewn about, seemingly without a care, cluttering up the beauty of God’s earth.
Even in the wild mountains, the scenic route from the valley to the beach, even here I find plastic bottles and throwaway biscuit wrappers on the ground. And in the orbit around the planet, "space junk" circles, creating a hazard for those living and working there. Wherever people go, we leave garbage.
But at the same time, we have an obsession with cleanliness. Just across the road from the college, there’s a house you can’t miss because in its yard there are three dogs who love to bark at passers-by. I am surprised at the number of times I go by that house and see the owner washing his car. We wash our cars, our faces, our hair, our bodies, our windows, our clothes. We seem to have a feeling when we’re dirty that makes us feel less than human. As the saying going, “cleanliness is next to Godliness” and I've even heard it said that "cleanliness is Godliness." I remember my summer job as a painter. The one thing I didn’t like about the job was that when I came home at the end of a long day, it took another hour before I would be clean. I had to smear a petroleum-based cream on my skin to get the oil paint off, and then spend a while in the shower just trying to restore my skin to the fresh, clean state necessary to be presentable again.
We look at the world, and see the mess, the clutter, the garbage, the litter. And when we look at our lives, we see the same things - habits, practices and inclinations that are not part of God’s original plan for us.
Perhaps it’s a tendency to become easily annoyed. Maybe a desire to avoid work when it comes. Maybe an impatience with those who don’t know exactly what they want. Maybe it’s a lack of love, an unwillingness to go out of one’s way to help another in need. Maybe it's a basic selfishness that we don't want to let go of. So many things clutter up our lives. So many things distract us from the pure way in which our Father would have us walk. And just as we want to be physically clean, we also want to be spiritually clean. Sometimes we will not admit to ourselves the fact that we need cleaning, but we try instead to do things to distract ourselves from our condition. But when we see ourselves in the light of the Cross, we know that God has an ideal for us, that we are not reaching. We realise that we need to be clean.
King David, the psalmist, experienced this same emotion, the feeling of needing to be clean. A man after God's own heart, a prophet and king of Israel, he allowed his eyes to wander, and his focus to blur. In one murderous and adulterous act, David polluted his life with sin. And so He turned to the original “Mr. Clean”, his God, his Father, and his Friend, and said, “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:7,10 NIV) As we echo the thoughts of David, we need to realise three things:
1. We need cleansing. Romans 3:23 confirms that all have sinned. Isaiah 64:6 tells us that “All of us have become like one who is unclean, all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.”
We like to hide the dirt in our lives. Some of us, when we go to buy a car, will buy one with a dark colour, “so the dirt won’t show as easily.” And while we may be able to hide the dirt in our lives from others, we know it’s there, and God knows it’s there.
2. We can’t cleanse ourselves. As Paul wrote in Romans 7, “I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate, I do... I know that nothing good lives in me... for what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing.” In and of ourselves we cannot do anything to remove the pollution and clutter that is in our lives, except to look to the pure One, the holy Lamb of God.
3. God will clean us, through the blood of Jesus Christ. As the leper recognised when he knelt down before the Creator, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” It is only the One who made us who can recreate us. But we must come to him, recognise our condition, and ask Him to transform us into His image once again. It is only when we submit ourselves to the Master that the clutter and confusion that messes up our lives can be replaced with the peace, joy, and love that God would have dwell in us.
Ellen White writes, "If every child of God would seek Him earnestly and perseveringly, there would be a greater growth in grace. By beholding we become changed. The more you contemplate the character of Christ, the more you will become conformed to His image. Come to Jesus as you are, and He will receive you, and put a new song in your mouth, even praise to God." (from the Review and Herald, June 24, 1884)
As we go forward, day by day, let us ask God to begin again in us the process of renewal, so that we will be clean.