Panic cleaning and God
At some point in our adult lives, we’ve all been there. Someone is on their way over to your house, and dread sets in as you look around the house and realize that it looks a bit more “lived in” than what you care to show to the world. The house might not be a disaster, but the level of clutter and unfinished tasks isn’t how you want to welcome someone into your home. The unexpected drop-bys might be the worst moments for this. How many times have you been in a conversation and something like this has been said:
· Oh good, you’re home. Do you mind if I swing by right now to borrow that thing from you?
· Hey, just to warn you…a couple of coworkers are going to swing by later tonight.
· My parents said that they want to stop by on Saturday. (you’re told this on a Friday night)
· I told my baseball team that they can come over after practice.
And what do we do when we are thrust into these kinds of moments? In our family, it’s called a “panic clean”. We frantically run around the house tidying up anything and everything that we can in whatever time we have left before the unexpected guest arrives. How familiar does this sound:
A quick sweep of the floor (not enough time to mop), if you’re lucky – run the vacuum, definitely get a load of dishes going (and shove some of the dirty ones into the oven), every stack of paper that you’ve been intending to get to is shoved into one stack and taken to a room you’re certain the guest will not go into, and on and on and on. And, of course, there is the obligatory statement when the guests finally arrive (even if you managed to do a decent clean up job):
Sorry the house is a mess.
However, the “panic clean” is only a surface cleaning; and, at best, it is a coverup of how we actually live. Running around like that, to either “save face” or make a “good impression”, never really addresses the root issue of how and why we live cluttered, messy lives.
If we’re honest, we tend to treat God the same way.
We think that we have to clean ourselves up before God will accept us. We tell ourselves that God would never want someone who numbs themselves with alcohol, binge-watches bad reality TV, uses profanity, or has lost track of their body count. We convince ourselves that we’re unworthy of God’s attention (let alone His love), and that God has better things to do and better people to spend time with than us.
But when we’ve hit our rock-bottom, and we have nowhere else to turn…we start to bargain with God:
I’ll dump all the alcohol down the drain and start going to church again. God, if you help me here, I’ll stop cussing and saying mean things to my coworkers.
We think that we have to “panic clean” to cover up enough, so that God might listen to us and send a little compassion our way. We do this because we’ve forgotten what Paul told the believers in Rome:
Romans 5:8
But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
He’s already accounted for your sin – all of it. What you did in the past, what you’ve already done today, and sins you’ll commit in the future. For us modern believers, ALL of the sins we’ve committed were in the future when Jesus died on the cross. He took humanity’s failings upon Himself, so that we can come to Him, without the “panic cleaning” and bartering. There is no negotiation needed, our sin-penalty has been paid.
Instead of bargaining, Jesus offers this:
Matthew 11:28-30
Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up My yoke and learn from Me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
He didn’t say “Come to Me, all who are full of energy and have their lives together.” If you’re weary from trying to pretend that you’ve got it all under control, and if you’re burdened by the fear of someone finding out you’re not as great as you appear – there’s no need to “panic clean”. Just as you are, Jesus says, “Come to Me.”
Keep Pressing,
Ken