Laundry Day

Today, my dear friends, is the day that every man, woman, college student, and some children dread every week. My friends, it is laundry day! It is that one day every week that you certainly get your exercise by picking up one load after another, hauling it to the washer, moving it to the dryer, and THEN folding it. Whew! It makes me tired just thinking about it.

You know, you wouldn't think that two people could create that much laundry. But somehow my husband and I create more laundry now than when my two sons lived at home. It is truly a puzzlement. You would think there would be less laundry, but such is not the case. It takes me ALL DAY and into the EVENING to wash clothes for two people!

You see, I have this theory. You put your dirty laundry into the hamper. While it sits there for a week, it (the dirty laundry) has this idea that when you leave the house, they are going to throw the biggest party in the world. You see, they get lonely and bored just sitting there in the hamper. Well, there aren't enough dirty clothes to make Guinness's Book of World Records, so they invite the clean laundry. The next thing you know, when laundry day comes, you have two weeks of dirty laundry instead of one because when the clean laundry mixed with the dirty laundry, it picked up the smell of the dirty laundry.

That's kind of the way it is with sin. First we look at it and it seems like fun. Then we think about it and really start to believe it IS fun. Then we think,"Oh, just once won't hurt anything. I'll just try it once but I won't do it again." After that, we're hooked because we find out it really IS fun. Next we feel ashamed that we can't seem to control this sin like we thought we could and we drop out of church (We wouldn't want anyone to know that we have this "pet" vice.) and the rest is history. We begin to move farther and farther away from God and start trying other "small sins". We have picked up that "dirty laundry smell."

The problem with all this is that there are no small sins to God. Sin is sin be it a little "white" lie or murder. It's all the same to Him.

The good news is that you are not the only one who has this problem. Even the apostle Paul had this problem. He says in Romans 7:15-18; 24-25, "For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but what I hate. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree with the law that it is good. So now I am no longer the one doing it , but it is sin living in me...What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh, to the law of sin."

So if the apostle Paul had trouble controlling the sin in his body, then I guess I am in pretty good company.

However, that dirty laundry is still piled up in the corner and if I don't want my whole house to stink then I have to wash it. That is taken care of too. In Isaiah 1:8 God says, "' Come, let us discuss this,' says the Lord. 'Though your sins are like scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are as red as crimson, they will be like wool'"

So you see, God does our dirty laundry of sin for us. And He does a better job than we do. I don't know about you, but I have done my share of accidentally having something red in my load of whites and had everything turn out pink. But not God. Even if He mixes the reds and whites, they still come out white as snow. He washes away ALL our sins. His laundry NEVER comes out pink.

Well, it's time to get back to my mountain of laundry. I think I hear my washer calling and I have to hurry before the dirty laundry decides to have another party.