Oh, Those Dirty Spots! … Hello weekend readers. My last devotion on Hump Day was about washing dishes and wow, did you all get back to me with wonderful stories. I truly was not only touched but was also laughing out-loud! So here is another “domestic” devotion, hope you’ll enjoy it.

I spoke with my Mom the other day—at 96 there are times I need her to send me her itinerary because she is on the go constantly. Sometimes I think she would have made a very good president of the USA! Anyway, she was trying to share a story with me and it took quite a while because of the laughter. Mom and I just couldn’t stop laughing!

The laughter was about Mom’s friend that abhors doing house cleaning. It took me one second to say to Mom, yep, I get that! (Growing up in the resort with 10 cabins was a lot of work and Mom is a clean freak, so us kids learned how to clean cabins that you could probably eat off the floor—that’s how clean it had to be!)

Anyway, her friend convinced her husband to get a Rhumba—you know, the robotic vacuum that, they say, runs all on its own. So through mom’s laughter this is what I gleaned from her friend who said:

“When I opened the box, I knew my life would change. Here is this miracle gadget that spins over my floors and carpets and it captivates me so much I enjoy watching it daily. I thanked my husband over and over for this incredible technology, which of course, he felt was just another whim…and I have to admit he was right. I realized there was a catch—no, there were catches. For instance, you have to rescue it around table legs, walls, hems of a sheet or bedspread—it will consume the end of a throw-blanket on your couch; and yes, it gets hung up on carpet snags and the worse yet—there is still dirty spots I have to take care of. And gosh dang it—it doesn’t empty the canister by itself. My husband looked at me as if I had lost my marbles. Then he just chuckled, picked up his newspaper and sat out on the deck.”

OK, I sent you a chuckle for the day but as I listened to my mom’s friend whom I know quite well, I just had to think of this technological wonder because it reminds me of ME! How easy do we get caught up in the dumbest things? Like bad habits. There are some days I ask God why did you create chocolate! Don’t we all just want God to step in, clean it all up nice and tidy and spit-spot? Oh, if God would just make our warts and pimples disappear into a ‘Rhumba’ so we don’t have to wrestle with them! It’s like saying, “Jesus, I love watching you do all the work.” But that’s not how it goes and we know that. Jesus knows we’d prefer “easy” but living only “easy” is not living at all!

So, I turned to Scripture about my “dirty spots” and in Ephesians 5:1-2, I found it and I love the way Eugene Peterson’s The Message Bible spells it out for us:

Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.

Wow, there it was—just what I needed for my struggling heart that, like the Rhumba, gets caught up in everything outside of what God wants my insides to be like. So, what is the antidote to our “dirty spots” – Jesus! He’s already done everything for us!

As we come up on the Christmas season (which box stores started before Halloween!) this is a great time to reflect on how a baby in a manger grew up to be the Savior of the world, who, through his sacrifice on the cross has made us clean—with NO effort required on our part! None of us ever lifted a finger—it was all God’s doing, giving us His only Son to die so we can live now and into eternity!

Join me in a prayer time where we give our “dirty spots” to Jesus and ask for cleansing and strength going forward. Together let’s also give Jesus our gratitude for something we can’t do on our own but his perfect ‘technology’ certainly can and does for us every day! AMEN.