Impossible Stains

My shower had become a Petri dish of stains and growths. I clean it regularly but I have chronically painful and weak wrists and hands, and it is very difficult to scrub very hard or for any length of time. So the intractable stains got deeper and darker and more entrenched. Yesterday morning I cracked. I had had enough of the brown crud that was the culmination of years of water stains, and whatever else was lurking in the discoloration. I attacked first with some heavy duty bleach cleanser. I don't know why I bothered. It has never really worked in the past. But I was determined. First I sprayed a boatload of bleach, and then I let it soak in for a half hour. And then I scrubbed and scrubbed till I could scrub no more. It had barely made a dent in the stain. However i was ready to keel over, asphyxiated with bleach fumes.

I got on Facebook and cried for HELP. Surprisingly, a few people chimed in instantly with ideas. My sister suggested half vinegar/half blue dawn dishwashing liquid. SO, I made a concoction per her instructions, sponged it on and then let it sit. After half an hour, I returned and began scrubbing. The stain did not miraculously disappear, and I was scrubbing harder than I have ever scrubbed in my life. BUT, I could see it was slowly coming off. This gave me renewed vigor. I scrubbed till I felt ready to pass out. When I finished, the stain was gone. The shower floor looked new. The walls need more work still but I did all I could handle for one day. When I had made the Facebook request I should have specified that I wanted something to remove the stain EFFORTLESSLY. This was excruciatingly hard work...though I was very pleased in the end with the clean shower.

This is a perfect symbol of sin. I would really prefer that the little stains and blemishes in my soul would be eradicated instantly with little effort, but it never ever seems to work that way. Usually, the same stains and blemishes come back day after day, and it requires constant, exhausting scrubbing to keep them at bay. Anyone who tells you that a sinless life is possible, or easy is lying. And anyone who thinks that you can maintain a cleansed soul without hard work is deluded. Or maybe it is just me... and all of you have spotless showers that wash themselves.

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If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin crouches at your door; its desire is for you, but you must master it. (Genesis 4:7 AMP)

“When a defiling evil spirit is expelled from someone, it drifts along through the desert looking for an oasis, some unsuspecting soul it can bedevil. When it doesn’t find anyone, it says, ‘I’ll go back to my old haunt.’ On return it finds the person spotlessly clean, but vacant. It then runs out and rounds up seven other spirits more evil than itself and they all move in, whooping it up. That person ends up far worse off than if he’d never gotten cleaned up in the first place. “That’s what this generation is like: You may think you have cleaned out the junk from your lives and gotten ready for God, but you weren’t hospitable to my kingdom message, and now all the devils are moving back in.” (Matthew 12:43-45 MSG)


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