MartiW
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Registered: 03-2006
Location: I
Posts: 208
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Coming Clean . . .
Every Thursday morning finds me amongst my peers -- yes, a whole classroom full of 5 year olds.  Under clever disguise (well, reality) of being a mom, I go to the Kindergarten classroom where I am put in charge of wonderful things to do. I get to use markers and scissors and glue and paint!!!! Last Thursday I arrived and the teacher asked me to do a project with the kids that she had never tried before: paint 2 paper plates per child solid orange. Now, considering the time of year this is not a strange request . I am looking forward to seeing the finished pumpkins, but I digress.
Alright, I get the first 2 kids back to my table and they paint their plates. Not too bad. They have a little orange paint to wash off their hands and any mess is on the newspaper that I laid down on the table and . . . okay, that was a bad choice of drying spots because now I have 2 plates upside down on the floor and as the next 2 kids are coming back I am trying to gets the plates back on a table to dry and wash up the orange paint on the floor which just seems to expand as I wash.
Alright, the next 2 kids went great and I hung the plates on the drying clips overhead. I am getting the hang of this. Turn to help next kid with art shirt, stand back up and *WHAP* wet pumpkin plate in my hair. :plz Okay, we're still fine and back at it. Alright, I kept working the sponge and the sink. I inspected kids as they went away for paint they missed washing on their hands and arms, but I sent them back to their other work clean. Me? I had paint in my hair, on my arms, on my hands (both sides), on my shirt (teacher pointed at the smock I could have worn after the fact), on the floor 3 different times, down the playhouse, on my shoes, around the sink, on the table, on the table legs -- yes, the more I tried to get it clean, the more orange spots I kept finding everywhere. By the time I was done and had everything in the classroom relatively orange spot free, I realized that I myself was a lost cause and no matter what I did, I could not deorange myself in that classroom.
One of the children was kind enough to remind me that when I got home I should not sit on the furniture or I would get in big trouble from my dad for getting stains all over the house.
Into the car, into the house, into the shower where all the orange washed away down the drain . . .
As I sat on the white couch after my shower all scrubbed and clean in my clean non-orange clothes, I thought about the warning that my little friend had given me. Full of stain we cannot sit around the house or we will be in big trouble. Yep. Lost in the stain of sin we are lost causes unable to destain ourselves. Everything we touch becomes stained. How indeed shall we enter the Father's House? That we need the grace of our Lord to wash away the stain of sin through baptism is obvious. However, is all the sin after that point stainless?
I truly wonder about those who believe that the sins we commit after we are washed need not be cleaned away. Shall they arrive at the House intending to sit on the furniture full of the stain of sins? Shall they be in big trouble as my little friend warned?
What worry is there for those of us who know that we can be made clean through the grace of our Lord not just once but as often as it takes until we can through His grace walk sinless and stainless into the Father's House? He sacrificed Himself once and for all. That sacrifice is the eternal one so that it may include all of us and as often as we need. We are blessed and hopefully, we are truly thankful for that blessing.
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DEUS meus, ex toto corde amo Te super omnia, quia es infinite bonus et infinite amabilis; et ob amorem Tui proximum meum diligo sicut meipsum, eique, si quid in me offendit, ignosco.
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10/18/2006, 8:32 am
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