Pressure-washing

As a homeschooling mom, summer is my "free" time to get things deep-cleaned and in order before the next school year.  Everything gets a thorough scrubbing.  Drawers and hidden cabinets are laid bare and reorganized.

A couple of weeks ago, we scrubbed our kitchen floors...the kind of scrubbing that requires hands and knees and lots of elbow grease.  The brush we use is stiff and unyielding, forcing dirt out of unseen indentations in the floor.

The murky water doesn't lie.  Filth was unearthed that day.

Outside, a similar story unfolded over the weekend...  Six years of dust and mold and outdoor filth had collected on our house and porches.  It happened so slowly over time...the piling over and over of small dirty particles...that we didn't even notice how different our house had become over the years.

Our back deck, covered in filth

No amount of scrubbing on our hands and knees would have remedied this built-up.  So, last weekend, my husband rented a pressure washer.  This thing sprays water so intensely that it took quite a bit of the old paint off the front porch banister!  It's the no-holds-barred sprayer.  I'm pretty sure that if you got in front of that stream of water, your skin might rip right off (don't try it!)!  :)  This thing means serious business, seeming to erase dirt and muck the moment the high-powered water makes contact.   

We watched our wooden decks reappear right before our eyes...stripped down to the bare wood.  The difference between the clean and dirty was amazingly obvious.  There's something very simple and beautiful about bare wood.

And bare souls...

Sometimes I need a wipe-down to remove a layer of filth.  Sometimes I need the scrubbing brush with its unyieldingly firm bristles.  And sometimes the pressure washer has to be applied...to the stubborn dirt, the filth of the ages that has collected...to the slimy mask that smothers the bare soul.

"Look! I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me to repay each person according to what he has done.  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.


"Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates."   --Revelation 22:12-14

What do my "robes" look like this day, right now?

There's beauty in that bare wood.  There's beauty and life in the purified soul.

"Surely You desire integrity in the inner self, and You teach me wisdom deep within.  Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow." --Psalm 51:7