Short Thought: Cleanliness

First, I am sorry for my blogging hiatus. It isn't that I had nothing to blog about because the past six weeks have been very eventful and formative. It is just that I have been focused on starting school, buying books, making friends, doing homework, reading books...and cleaning.



Tonight I wanted to explore the idea of cleanliness. My whole life the pursuit of order and cleanliness has been a big deal. I cannot focus in a dirty or unorganized situation. If I find myself there, my focus is to clean or organize it. At times this obsession has taken the place of other necessary activities. In high school particularly, I mis-prioritized my life. Gradually I have learned that there is a good, better, and best. Sometimes cheering up a friend is more important than cleaning the dishes now. Sometimes the laundry will have to wait so that I can write a paper. And...this is hard to admit, but it does happen, sometimes it is more important to go to class than to shower.

This sometimes fanatical need to be clean, I think, comes from the idea that I feel dirty, or inadequate, and that by cleaning my surroundings I might eek out a little bit of control over the situation and clean it. I have struggled with this idea for a long time, and I am only now beginning to realize the futility of thinking it. In the Book of Acts the Lord admonishes Peter, "What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common" (Acts 10:15). However hard I have tried in the past to keep my surroundings, my body, my mind clean, it does not matter. In a sense, a kitchen countertop, a bathroom, or a life can always be cleaner. If there is no way I, myself, can keep physical things clean, then how much more impossible would it be for me to try to clean my own soul. The Lord's cleansing power for the soul is unique because it cleans completely. When He cleans, He makes us pristine. This is something we cannot do on our own. This is why he is called our Savior.

To all of those, myself included, who have felt used, inadequate, imperfect, or dirty, I urge you to look to  Jesus Christ to eradicate these false feelings to reveal you as a pristine, competent, perfect, and, even, clean person.

"Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind, and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God. And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot (Moroni 10:32-33).

I am committed to stop denying the power of God to clean and order my life. I will realize now that calling myself unclean is denying that this power exists. "What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common"