Scripture:

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.” - Psalm 51:10-12

Thought for the Day:

I’m sitting in my living room and I am positioned to look out into the back yard as well as the front yard.

As I gaze out the front window, I am able to see my freshly freshly cut lawn. It wasn’t long ago that I was ashamed of myself because the grass was growing out of control. Now, I feel a sense of satisfaction because it looks the yard looks nice, not perfect, but nice.

And then I look out the back window and there is a mess! The grass still isn’t cut. The bushes that were overgrown and hacked down are now attempting to regrow but honestly, they look horrid. And lurking around the corner, just out of eye-site is some severely overgrown spearmint burying the sidewalk on one side and a wealth of unrelenting, always returning, weeds blocking the steps down to the garage on the other side.

Why am I ratting myself out like this? Well, because I see an analogy that rings all too true in our lives.

So many of us are great at keeping up a good front. The person in us that others get to see is nice, not perfect, but nice. Our days are always going good, our problems are few… We tend to convey the tag line from the “Old Milwaukee” beer commercials: “It doesn’t get any better than this!”

However, we know that if people could see inside of us, there is a mess. Proverbs 20:9-10 asks, “Who can say, ‘I have made my heart clean; I am pure from my sin’?”

How often we are inundated with grudges that we can’t dismiss, affronts that we won’t let go, injustices that we cling to, and hurts that fester. We may look good on the outside, but we are racked with sin on the inside and it makes a mess of things in our lives.

When the messy inside is cleaned up and cleaned out to match our approachable outside, when we become fully authentic in who we are before God and others… then life truly “doesn’t get any better!”

I pray that life for all of us!

Prayer for the day: Create in me a clean heart, O God! Empower me to be fully authentic, so that my thoughts and my actions are one before you and others. Amen.