I love my children. I love all the fun things they say and
do, the noise and laughter, the exploration, and even the messes. My children
are two and four and they share a room pretty full of toys. It is their
greatest delight to pull absolutely everything out and scatter it hither and
yon, despite the neat bins, boxes and cubes I’ve designated as homes for
everything.
Each night while I’m cleaning up the kitchen, I utter that
completely useless phrase, “Go clean your room.” While I’m busy rinsing dishes,
wiping counters and putting food away, peals of laughter (and, okay, sometimes
yelling) emanate from the room. I go in there, see the kids amidst all the
toys, playing happily, and say, “Clean your room or I’m coming back with the
paddle.” A flurry of activity ensues…right until I walk out the door. After a
while, Bella comes in and happily announces, “Our room’s all clean!” and I go
to inspect. Books on the floor. Toy cars strewn about. Naked Barbies on the
bed. Playing cards covering the carpet. I stare at what they consider clean. “This isn’t clean! Put the books back on the
bookshelf. Put the cars in the car cube. Barbies go in their bin. Gather the
playing cards in the tub with the blocks.” More activity. Their standard isn’t
my standard.
Enter Proverbs 16:2 “All the ways of a man are pure in his
own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit.” (ESV)
Dear me. How many times have I gone along and thought that
my ways were pure, that my heart was clean, when God was looking at my
attitudes and the deep heart issues and seeing that my idea of clean was not His idea of clean. It’s a classic
problem of human nature: we see ourselves as “not so bad” or “not as bad
as…(fill in the blank.” The standard is set and we don’t measure up. Our ideas
of clean are way off base.
While doing my devotions in Proverbs, I have been hit time and
time again with those areas that I think aren’t too bad. God shows me
otherwise.
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