God's Cleansing Power

If it weren’t for women most of us guys would still be living in a cave sitting around deciding if we were hungry enough to go hunting or not. My domestic training over the years has netted a guy willing to help with the dishes, do a little cooking, push a cart through the grocery store, alone, without embarrassment and do some laundry without running colors or melting elastic waste bands. Of course, training started very early in life with domestic chores around the house every day. The recent cold weather brought to mind the day I helped with the laundry. I don’t remember why I was involved, but do know it was a very cold day and for some reason my mother wouldn’t let me out of her sight. Anyway, I remember the wringer washer, big tubs to catch the clothes as they exited the wringer squeezing out the soapy water. Then the washer got emptied and refilled with clean hot water for rinsing the laundry and another run through the wringer to squeeze the water out. That day mom was washing bed sheets, huge pieces of cloth to a little guy. The final rinse and run through the wringer had to be done just so, positioning the big sheets in the big laundry basket in a way that hanging them on the clothes line outside was a little easier. I helped lifting the sheets out of the basket as my mother attached the sheets to the clothesline with those wooden clothespins. The sun was warm, but the air was cold and I couldn’t wait to get back inside the house. Well, for the cold weather part. About the time my mother figured the sheets should be dry, hanging in that beautiful sunshine, we found them frozen stiff as a board. If I remember right, the sheets hung there for several days, even through a snow storm before the sun and wind thawed and dried them. Doing the laundry is easy now-a-days.
A lady was showing her visiting church friend her neighbor’s wash through her kitchen window. “They’re not very clean people”, the lady said. “Just look at the streaks on that wash!” The friend reluctantly looked and then softly said, “Dear, those streaks aren’t on your neighbors wash. They’re on your window.”
[1 Corinthians 6: 9-11] If it weren’t for the Word of God I would still be in the clutches of the evil one sitting around trying to decide if it was really worth the effort to go on living. It really does get that bad when one has no hope of ever finding true happiness. Spiritual training, and I’m going to call it that because I continue to experience epiphanies of rational truths that better my life as a whole. When I first came to the Lord I realized my sinful nature and the need for cleansing of the spirit through baptism (Acts 2:37-41). It felt as though a heavy weight had been lifted off my shoulders and life was anew. But then the devil took me back to the world and hung me out in the cold with a cruel personal attack to test my new found faith. Let me tell you, I froze to death. Life dealt me a miserable hand and I folded. I felt dirty, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. My spirit was in worse condition than before. But I never gave up. I continued to walk in the sunshine as often as possible trying to thaw out my hardened heart. Then I learned to walk in the Son again. Since I quit trying to find a cleansing solution in the world and returned to the Word for guidance and answers I don’t fear the cold of the world anymore. Read, 2 Corinthians 4. Unlike our temporal bodies and possessions that can become soiled beyond our ability to cleanse, our eternal soul is never beyond God’s cleansing power. Are you cleansed in His power?