When I went to clean my sons’ bathroom the other day, I discovered an absurd amount of toothpaste smeared and crusted to both the floor and the underside of their rug. Needless to say, I was not delighted by this discovery.
After explaining to the boys that this would’ve been much easier to clean up right after the moment it happened, instead of after it had hardened and fused to the floor and the rug, it got me to thinking about how often we do this in life.
Whether it’s a mistake or just a place where we feel weak, our instinct is survival. Hide. Avoid the immediate trouble. Move on. Brush it under the rug. But the thing we are trying to hide is still there, waiting to be brought into the light. We might forget about it, but when someone pulls the rug back, man, what a mess. We have no choice but to face it.
Our instinctive nature was truly born out of a life or death instinct. I sense danger—I need to hide to survive, but today, that instinct can sometimes be flipped. Like Adam and Eve in the garden hiding from God after they ate the forbidden fruit, we usher in death when we think we can hide our sin, our faults, our weaknesses. We forget that God still sees. He knows what’s going on in our hearts and minds. He is constantly calling us out of hiding because “Everything that is visible becomes light.” Eph 5:14
Stop carrying around the gunk getting stuck to you. When you give it to God it becomes light—not a burden, your load becomes light. It also becomes light as in when we face the gunk in our lives, when we “bring it to light” as the saying goes, we are doing so to face it with the intent to repair it, clean it up, be made new. God says, “I created you. You are beautiful. You are loved even in your weakness, even in your sin. You are a masterpiece. Let Me heal, let Me make you clean, because I love you.” The question is will we let Him love us in our weaknesses. Will He be able to say to you: “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.” Mark 5:34
God invites us to this every day. To face the hard things so that we don’t let those things begin to latch onto our identity and define us. If we have a weakness, God is there to give us strength. If we trip and fall, God is there to catch us. And even when we hide it under the rug for a very long time, He is there to scrub it all clean, to remind us He makes all things new.
“The favors of the Lord are not exhausted, his mercies are not spent; They are renewed each morning, so great is his faithfulness.” Lam 3:22-23
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