Bath Time Epihpany

Have you ever noticed that you clean your tub and it stays clean...clean...clean...then...BAM!  One day you get in and there's mold.  And if you don't get it off right away it gets ugly, quickly!

So, I'm in the shower this morning and I notice mold on my curtain and think, "That wasn't there yesterday."  How does it go from clean to gross overnight?

The truth, of course, is that it doesn't.  We know those mold spores are there festering all the time.  But, like dust particles in the air, each one is invisible. It's only when you have a lot of them collect or grow on a surface, that they become visible.

I use very few cleaning agents in my house, mostly vinegar for everything.  But, I have not been able to ween myself off of bleach.  Because I have not found anything like it to kill mold and I am the craziest anti-mold person on the planet.  If I see mold, I immediately start thinking, "Are we breathing that stuff?!  Is it growing in places I can't see?"  And I attack it with bleach water.

Mold is nasty stuff and the spores are all around us.  The only way to ensure they don't get out of control is to regularly use some cleaning agent that destroys them.  For me, that's bleach.

There's a parallel here--one that seems so obvious now as I'm typing but seemed like such an epiphany when I was in the shower.  We are like the bathtubs, susceptible to all sorts of "spores" that are floating around looking for a surface on which to land and breed, spores such as greed, jealousy, idolatry, hatred, and selfishness.  There is only one cleaning agent that is effective at killing ALL of these terrible diseases: God's Word.  The spores can land on us each and every day, triggering moments of selfishness or envy, but if we are getting cleaned by the bleach of God's Word every single day, then land they may, but die they certainly will--and quickly!  But if we are not getting cleaned everyday, then the spores will multiply and grow until we start to feel dirty and gross and unattractive to God and the world.  And if we go long enough without any cleaning, pretty soon we won't just feel unattractive but our diseases will be obvious to the whole world.  Ugh.  Nasty stuff.

I don't know about you, but I need some bleach today.  I'm realizing that just one day without a proper cleaning is a seriously dangerous thing.  I do not want to give any ugly thing time to grow in my heart, and I've been so guilty of it.  Even of late.  I'm so grateful His mercies are new every morning.


"How sweet are your words to my taste; sweeter than honey to my mouth."  Psalm 119