February 18, 2010
Roger is an amazing guy with a huge heart for the indigenous people of
Australia, and we wanted to serve him by doing whatever he needed us to. That
meant doing a lot of cleaning. One of our big projects was cleaning all the
spider webs off the underside of the roof.
Step one: Use a push broom to get all the large cobwebs,
some of them with spiders inside.
Step two: Kill any and all spiders that fall from the
ceiling. Methods may include stomping, stamping, killing them with screams, or
bashing with the broom.
Step three: Sweep the ceiling again. Mind you, this is a
tall ceiling, and a short broom. You do the math.
Step four: Fill up a bucket with water and soap.
Step five: Climb up ladder and bend in all directions to
clean off the ceiling with a cloth.
Step six: Climb down the ladder, rinse the cloth, repeat
about 300 times.
Cleaning is fairly new for me. Yes, I lived on my own for a
few years, but not with the cleanest people, so we usually only cleaned a few
times a semester. Lately it seems we’ve been cleaning places that haven’t been
cleaned in months or years. This means a lot of scrubbing, elbow grease and
sweat. It is also around 85-90 degrees most days, with fairly high humidity.
Fun stuff, right?
It gives me a lot of time to think, however. I wrote a blog
a few months ago about God cleaning house in our heart. He lives there, and
wants it to be clean. He is not a guest who you can keep in the living room. He
is actually the owner, the master of the house, and is entitled to each room.
After three days of spider killing, they haunt me. I close
my eyes and see spiders. This is scary. But here’s what I see-my heart is kind
of dirty. It’s been covered with cobwebs of lies and chains made of dirt, sin
and my past. God wants to break those chains, he wants to destroy the cobwebs,
he wants to kill the spiders that run through my mind with lies and build
stifling cobwebs that prevent me from becoming the woman he wants to be. God
wants it to be a shiny, clean heart, whole and truth-filled. But first he has
to kill the spiders, take down the cobwebs, and clean house. Who would want to
live with spiders and cobwebs when the alternative is so much prettier and more
inviting?
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy
Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
you were bought at a price.” 1 Corinthians 6:19
