There's nothing like it...

There's nothing like a good, deep clean.

Have you ever looked at what looks like an insurmountable project? or a mess that looks nearly impossible to clean? Well, this is what I had once when it took us nearly 6-8 weeks to move homes. We moved from Wyoming to Washington and the process involved taking nearly a half a dozen trips to the dump. We loaded up the van (emptied out of all seats) and drove to the nearest landfill and dumped heaps and heaps of just garbage. (They didn't recycle there as much except for cardboard... but things like foam or form fitting things and other undesirables would have to go somewhere!) I couldn't believe what I had allowed to collect.

Sure some toys were broken... some things were just nonsense paper that we didn't destroy or shred or burn and it collected.

Some of it was wood and other broken pieces from off the house. Some of this was wet and undesirable. I had to shovel out plenty of heaps of paper that had sat on semi-wet concrete. (I say semi-wet because this stuff sat in a shed that sat below a deck overhead.) The deck overhead leaked. Even though our stuff was relatively safe there, in the spring time during the thaw, it was beginning to get wet. There were spiders, bugs and other biologicals that lived underneath the pile.

There were doors to fix, unfinished basements to finish completely but was 99% done. I finished the final touches on the spare office/bedroom.

All and all, it was a mess. An undesirable mess to clean up. This to me, represents what sort of cleaning goes on in the soul.

When the garbage heaps pile up and we no longer have any view of the sun, which gives us warmth, we lay in the underbelly of papers and wet concrete, in a very undesirable place to be. We know the efforts that are required to make the personal temple presentable once more. It may take maybe 6-7 times at the offerings for sin; at the sacrament bar. It may take additional prayer and a shovel or two extra than one wanted to shovel to get those secret places clean. It may take a few final touches to make that home 100% completed and not just 99%...

I guess anything is possible so long as we don't burn down the house and render it beyond repair... but even then, hopefully, one may begin a new. God is both merciful and just. The best bet is to have a better way than not to allow sin to clutter our minds and stain our souls. Better to avoid sin than to have our hearts weighed down by it. Better to heed the fence at the top of a cliff than to place an ambulance down at the bottom of the ravine. Over all, there is a job to be done and with God's help, it may just be accomplished.