Cleaning Before Cleaning (02/03/2025)

This morning my husband watched as I put away things on the counter. He commented about the irony of “cleaning before the cleaner comes.” He’s right. It is crazy. I have an amazing helper who comes every two weeks to help me with parts of keeping house I struggle with. And I always do “clean before the cleaner comes.” She knows I need her help. I guess I just don’t want her to know just how much I need her help.

I struggle with what others think of me. I try not to let it impact what I do or say, but I’d be dishonest if I said it didn’t. I want to only be swayed for loving reasons by the LORD and by my family. But fear of judgment of others does factor in at times, if I’m being perfectly honest.

The Way that Christ has laid before us as we strive to journey in Him, with Him and through Him is demanding. Not everyone in this world agrees with our commitment to Christ and to His command to love the LORD with all our being and strength and to love one another as He has loved us. It’s a high bar. I fail frequently, to be honest, but I count my greatest failures as those times I didn’t do the good because of fear of judgment from another.

There’s another side to this coin, we all know, and that is doing things only for show, doing them only to impress others, for others’ praise. Jesus warned us about that, too. He calls us to be authentic, to be sincere in our words and our deeds, to do them for the right reasons, to do them for love rather than prestige.

As we journey, let us seek to be authentic, to do the right and the good and the loving for love of our LORD and for love of one another. Let us never stoop for prestige; let us only stoop to lift another up.

As my husband was kidding me this morning, I thanked him because I was struggling for something to share in the blog today. God writes straight with crooked lines, don’t you know. I got my topic and my comeuppance all in one. God is awesome.

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.