CLEAN OUT YOUR CRATERS

Confession time: I’m a procrastinator.  Tuesday night, I told Heidi that I would do the dishes—except the two muffin tins.  I hate washing the muffin tins.  Well, I didn’t do the dishes.  I figured I would get up early on Wednesday and do them prior to anybody waking up for the day…and I did.  But unfortunately, I didn’t get them all done.  I had a couple of pots and pans left.

So those dishes sat there until after supper.  Heidi was going to do them (plus all the new dishes from the day), but I felt guilty for not finishing the dishes from the day before so I said that I would do them; I felt so guilty that I even said that I would wash the dreaded muffin tins.  Well, the same thing happened as the day before and I decided to get up early this morning to finish them all—including the muffin tins.

Well…we had a horrible night with Caleb.  He was up most of the night crying.  So, getting up this morning was quite tough and I wasn’t able to get up early enough to do the dishes before Heidi got up.  I think you can formulate an idea of what her reaction was to seeing muffin tins from Tuesday night when she woke up this morning.  I’m just glad that I have a loving, forgiving wife.

So, the morning was spent working on some of the details and foundational aspects of the new church…and doing the dishes—including the muffin tins.  I hate washing muffin tins.  It throws off the whole system—you think you have two dishes left, but in reality you have 24.  Each little muffin crater is like a little bowl that needs to be washed out and scrubbed.

And that got me thinking…our lives as Christians are like muffin tins.  We give our lives (our one dish) to Christ and we’re washed clean.  But that’s not the end of it.  We all have more to do.  We have to work to get certain areas in our lives cleaned up: we need to stop our sinful patterns; we need to get in the Word; we need to pray; we need to submit to the Lordship of Christ; we need to…on and on.  We need to clean out every crevice of our lives and work to be more like Christ.

I don’t like washing muffin tins, but when I do…I do it well.  Nobody wants dried-up bits and pieces from past muffins contaminating the new, fresh muffin batter.  And so it is with Christ: when He comes back, He will be coming for a pure, blameless bride.  He doesn’t want the nasty bits and pieces from our past.  So get to work; clean out your craters.