So, life has been busy here at Bethany. I pretty much spent the whole day scrubbing the dish pit. For months, tons of “sticky spilling” of milk, juice, cereals, farmer sausage, white sauce, jell-o, noodles, bread crumbs, lettuce and the like have been accumulated on the edges of the tables and the walls of the dish pit. No wonder why I did not feel hungry at the end of the day. After about 7 hours of diligent cleaning, the dish pit is now “sanitary”.
As I’ve been cleaning the kitchen these last couple of days, I often wondered why we made such a big deal of this spring cleaning. They do that every year and a mini one around Christmas too. I mean, it’s good to clean things, but really, to do it every year (thank God I won’t be around next year…) moving stuff around and being very meticulous is a long, hard job, it’s a pain. Why can’t we do it once every year? It’s not like the building will fall apart or the machines will break if there’s dust and some sticky stuff under the dish washer and on the edges of some tables. You know what I mean?
I’m sorry, I’m not a germ freak. I think it’s really neat to keep things clean, really. But, man isn’t it a bit much?
As I scrub walls and sigh that I need to change the brown water of my pale for the 10th time that morning, I realize that if we don’t keep cleaning all these machines and cupboards and corners of the freezer, the white sauce sticking under the counter won’t be sticky anymore if I wash it off in two years from now, it will be rock. The hard work of today will become extremely hard tomorrow if I don’t do it today. That’s what I’m learning. Well, it’s something I knew before but…
It makes me think about laziness again. Am I a lazy in my walk with Jesus? Do I put aside the things He wants me to do or not do? It’s easy to go through everyday and not really think about doing the right things, especially for those of you who just left Bethany. Sometimes I just want to take life easy and not to worry about trying to love people better (!), spend time with God, encourage a sister, be honest or be selfless or anything else I know I should be doing. I stay in my comfort zone (the sticky jello-ee edge of the “hole” on the dish counter). I am not challenged, I am just well, but my heart becomes hard to the Holy Spirit and blindly I sit as the wrong stuff and dust accumulates in my heart. I need to keep clean, to be alert. Even though it’s a pain to discipline myself to read the Bible and seek the joy of others and etc. it will help me not become so lazy and blind about my own sins and it will help me stay clean. Otherwise, it will be a harsh job when I realize, years later, that I was mistaken and I need to clean up my heart.
I want to remain faithful even though I’d like to sit for a while and enjoy life like most people do. I want to beat my body and make it my slave (1 Cor. 9:27) even though it doesn’t make sense to me why I should fight for discipline and seeking to obey Jesus and to love. You can pray for me about that. Feel free to leave a comment or email me gabeleroux@yahoo.ca about it so I can pray for you as well.
BANK FOR NATIVE MISSIONARIES: 12$/ as of April 19, 2006.
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