What's Your Dirty Counter-top?

About two weeks ago I recreated our counter-top (I gave it a face lift) in a faux granite look. I love it. Over the weekend, I was given five baskets of tomatoes. What a blessing!! So I made spaghetti sauce. Do you know it’s very hard to make spaghetti sauce without making a mess? It is, trust me on this. This morning as I was making coffee I decided to wipe off the counter-top. It didn't look too dirty, so it wouldn't take too long, right? Wrong!!! As I started cleaning, I noticed that the counter-top was filthy even though it didn't look dirty at all. I was congratulating myself on choosing colors that would hide the dirt well, then suddenly I stopped and laughed at myself. Did I really want the dirt to be hidden? Of course not!! I want The counter-top to BE clean mot just appear to be clean. I thought of when Jesus called the Pharisees whitewashed tombs. What he was saying is that, although they looked clean, they were grubby and full of rotting, disgusting stuff. Then I thought about how many of us do the same thing in our life. We can say and do the right things and appear clean until a car cuts us off, someone at work irritates us, or things don’t go the way we want and we instinctively act in another manner. In fact, even IF we, by some stroke of luck, hide the dirt and no one realizes we are dirty, There is still one who knows about the dirt... God. Imagine that you came to my house and you saw the counter-top; you might think it was clean, but I would know the truth. I would know it was grimy even if you never knew. Fact!! Everybody has a dirty counter-top; sometimes I have more than one. Often, in our Christian life, we would prefer to cover up the sin rather than confess it. We think that somehow it will go away or if we can't see it, it doesn't exist. What we really need is to admit the sin, dirt, and then clean it. Errrr… have God clean it. God isn't interested in hiding the dirt, of our lives. He wants to change us and make us sparkling. Hiding the sin in our lives won't make it go away, the absolute, only way to make the sin go away is to confess it. In the same way, it is better to clean the counter-top and remove the dirt rather than hide it. because the dirt won't go away by itself. What's your dirty counter-top?

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