Cleaning

I have been cleaning my house for the past 2 days. Not continually, mind you, but intermittently cleaning. It’s been just enough to keep me busy. Every time I clean lately I’m more and more convinced there will be no dust or dirt in heaven because I really can’t stand it. It’s not that dusting is so difficult, because it’s not, but the continuous, unrelenting way about it is what frustrates me. I wipe a surface clean, removing the dust and revealing the surface of the furniture, and sure enough 3 days later, the dust has built up again. It begins to settle almost immediately after I’ve wiped the surface clean, in spite of the cleaners I use which promise to “repel dust”. Yeah, right. There is no reprieve from it. And then I realize there actually are people in the world who enjoy cleaning. Yes, you heard correctly; they ENJOY CLEANING. I know, I’ve often wondered what kind of sick and twisted mind one would have to possess to enjoy cleaning. I think that maybe such a person enjoys the feeling of accomplishment, especially when it’s as instantaneous and visible as cleaning. If something is dirty, you work hard to clean it and then you reap the rewards of a clean object. The problem for someone like me is it never stays clean. I am forever cleaning the same surfaces again and again, and frankly it wears me out.

I think we often want our relationships with others to work the same way, and when they don’t, we get frustrated and want to move on to working hard on something that will reap more tangible and lasting results. But relationships are so much harder than just wiping a surface clean, even harder than getting your back into it and scrubbing the surface clean. Relationships require you get your heart into it, and that’s dangerous territory. We spend a good part of this life trying somehow to protect our fragile hearts, and relationships expose them more than anything else. Think for a minute about the one relationship in your life that, if jeopardized, would cause your adrenaline to kick into high gear and ignite that innate fight mechanism within us all. You protect that person, whether it’s your spouse, child, parent, sibling, or best friend, and you protect that relationship with everything in you because you recognize what that person (and relationship) means to you. You protect it because you recognize the implications of harm coming to that relationship. You are vulnerable in that relationship and so for it to be jeopardized means your heart is exposed and vulnerable. You are protecting yourself and the other person from hurt, or at least that is your desire. And in reality, can we really protect anyone from anything?

If we invested ourselves in all relationships the way God invests Himself in relationship with us, we would have our hearts crushed all over the place, and let’s be honest, who wants that? But if we truly trust in that one relationship that trumps all others, the one we hopefully have with God, the rest is just collateral damage from which we can easily recover. What if we invested ourselves into every relationship with complete abandon? What if we kept coming back to clean up the dirt and messes in the lives of others that we know will almost immediately make themselves visible again? What if we scrub and scrub and the dirt doesn’t budge? Does that mean we stop trying and move on to a more agreeable surface? Or is this exactly what God does with us every day? We are called to go further, do more, give our coat too when our shirt is requested, walk 2 miles instead of just the one that is required. Dust that stinking shelf off again; knowing the dust has only temporarily disappeared. Go back again and again and again, subjecting ourselves to hurt and exposition in ways only the Father’s love can heal. This is our calling. Our CALLING. Why? Because it’s what our relationship has been with an all-loving God and Father, and as His children we are to be an extension of His hands to a hurting world in need. We all know this truth in our heads, but oh, when we can get it into our hearts, what a day that will be. And we can rest assured in God’s love, which supersedes all others. Everything, EVERYTHING, begins and ends with it, so what do we have to fear? Our hearts will be broken, to be sure, but when they are we know we can bring them to our God for healing, all so we can take them back out to be broken again. We can clean up those dirty parts of life that will most assuredly be dirty again before we are even finished wiping them down.