Spot Cleaning

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I have two problems with spot cleaning (ok maybe three…). The most frustrating one is the seeming futility, when you go to the trouble of trying to remove a spot what is most likely to happen is that you end up revealing countless others that you didn’t notice before, but seem to come out in the wash. Then there is the hard work that goes into stain removing. Maybe I just haven’t found the right stain removers yet, but it seems that no matter what you use there is a lot of time and energy consumed in rubbing and scrubbing. I just had a shower before my morning shower this morning, by trying to get some of my whites to pretend to be white again. (Now it was 90+F with humidity before 8 this morning and that has something to do with the sweat bath, but I had streams of salty sweat running into my eyes before my washing machine was half full!). My third problem isn’t exactly a problem it is more of a speculation. I sometimes wonder whether it is the stains that help to hold some of my clothes together.

The same things are true when we are dealing with sin in our lives. God starts working on a major area of sin and we think “wow, I’m glad that is over,” only to realize that there are a number of other little sins that we didn’t notice before that need to be dealt with now. It is also a painful process when God starts pointing out sin in our lives. It means acknowledging our wrong and our need of his forgiveness, surrendering to him (again?) and sometimes it means breaking old habits or ways of thinking. I sometimes think that it is painful for him too, wondering when we are going to fully surrender every area of our lives to his cleans
ing. I think the process has the same results in our lives as my spot cleaning frequently does here in Niger. It leaves behind holes. Holes that allow his love and life to shine through us that those around us , so that they see less of us and more of Him.
We got to do some visiting with the boys because of the holiday for Ramadan and so I thought I'd include some recent pics!