Clean

Psalm 51:10

King James Version (KJV)

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

Lately, I've been pretty busy with my new job, so I have been getting a little bit behind on house work. For the most part, the house hadn't been looking very messy, aside from unpacked boxes, but just because I didn't notice the mess doesn't mean it wasn't there.  Today, while I was talking on the phone in the kitchen, I saw a HUGE bug with lots of legs and long antennae appear out of nowhere and scamper across the floor.  I was so freaked out; I cleaned the house top to bottom just to make sure that there weren't any other creepy crawlies hiding out anywhere. It was an exhausting experience.

I know that the reason there was a bug in my house was because I had been letting it go.  Instead of vacuuming regularly and cleaning up messes as soon as they happened, I justified procrastination with, "It doesn't look that bad."  Some of you may not know how much I hate bugs, but it's safe for you to assume that it's a lot.  Seeing that bug in my home today was a total wake up call for me, but I can't believe it took something as extreme as that ugly bug to get me to scrub down my house!

A lot of the time, I think that people are the same way with their spiritual lives. They get so caught up in the current world that they are simply to busy to spend time with God, clean their hearts, and renew their spirits.  We tell ourselves that missing one day of reading our Bibles can't do that much damage. Prayer gets pushed to the back burner, and we forget about exercising our faith.  After all, God can wait, but work can't. Just like my little bits of food crumbs on the kitchen floor didn't seem like a big deal to me, our little days of blowing off God doesn't seem like anything to worry about. Nevertheless, it eventually adds up, leaving us thinking to ourselves, "How did I let it get this bad?"

C.S. Lewis, who is quite obviously one of my favorite authors, wrote a book called The Screwtape Letters. In this book, Screwtape is a clever old demon who is teaching his younger apprentice Wormwood how to effectively guide a man to their "Father Below," also known as the devil. To them, "the Enemy" is God.  At one point, Screwtape tells Wormwood this:

“You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one –the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

Now, the point is that the little things add up.  Not that forgetting to pray every day will get you thrown into hell or anything, but every day you blow off God will make it harder to follow Him.  The longer I went without cleaning, the harder it was when I eventually got to it; the longer we go without spending time with God, the harder it will be to follow Him.  If we put aside a little bit of time every day, though, to pray and read our Bibles and devotionals, following God becomes second nature to us.

Realizing that the seemingly little things matter, let us remember to spend time with God, for he will clean our hearts and our spirits for us.  Just like our houses need to be cleaned often, our hearts regularly need God to renew them.  We must keep up with our "spiritual cleaning," so that we don't have to clean up bugs later down the road.  Our messy lives can only get messier without God, but with Him, we can be good as new.

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