The pandemic has kept my hands cleaner than they’ve ever been. So much so, in fact, that a couple of my fingers have cracks in the skin from the multitude of hand washings each day. I don’t remember being concerned about my hands being clean when I was a nose-picking, coughing-into third-grader. Cleanliness has come on me later in life.
Late-18th Century preacher John Wesley said that “cleanliness is next to godliness.” Although Wesley was thinking just as much about moral purity as he was of physical cleanliness, the message stuck. Most people think that Wesley’s words were a scripture quote from the Book of Proverbs. They would very well fit into the emphases of our present COVID-19 precautions.
In my reading through the Bible this year I am presently in the “clean chapters” of Leviticus. I’ve been intrigued and startled by the requirements for cleanliness amongst the people of God. If I wasn’t reading scripture I would think it had been written by someone with excessive compulsive behavior or the CDC.
Good hygiene has a purpose. So does a soul rescued from the darkness of sin. Leviticus is filled with remedies for “getting clean” again…offer a sacrificial animal, get quarantined for a period of time, wash thoroughly. Each situation of intentional or unintentional defilement had a procedure. Leviticus 18 and 19 reads like a Baptist youth group’s list of don’ts. Better to be proactive at the beginning of a youth activity than reactive afterwards.
Jesus was proactive and reactive. That is, he became that cleansing agent even before we’d been tainted and he is that reconciler even after we’ve strayed into the dirt. Hebrews 9:14 tells us this.
” How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!“
That’s some deep cleaning!
There’s another parable that Jesus tells in Luke 15 about deep cleaning. It’s the story of the widow who sweeps her house until she finds one lost coin. That probably meant sweeping a dirt floor, moving everything around until she found one small, perhaps to most insignificant, coin. That tells me what a clean fanatic Jesus is willing to be to find me and anyone else who’s lost and doesn’t realize it.
Yesterday, Carol dropped a needle on the floor and couldn’t find it. A needle on the floor is hard to find until the bottom of your foot says, “Found it!” I went to my knees and searched until the flipping of a rug caused it to become visible. That picture of being on my knees made me think of the extensive search that Jesus conducts for each one of His children. Can you see him down on all fours looking for you?
Words from WW Blog 