It's Not About The Grout

More than twenty years ago in a house where we lived, it appeared the builder found a great bargain on white floor tile, and he paved an expanse that led from the front door, down a hallway and back into the kitchen.  It was nice-looking when it was clean.  But we had four small children in that season of life, need I say more.

I was down on my knees one day, not praying, but griping, while I scrubbed the vast stretches of dirty white grout in the heavily trafficked hallway.   Friends were coming to visit the next day.

I resented my work, knowing full well that NO ONE would even know what I had spent so much time doing.  This is such a waste of time.  There are so many other important things I could be doing this afternoon.

This is about the LAST thing I want to do.  This is not my gift.  This is not my degree or my training.  This is not even what I am good at.

And somehow in my grumbling, God inserted, "Would you do it for Me if I was coming?"

"Of course, LORD, gladly."

I set down the scrub brush for a minute, up to my elbows in humble pie.

"Truly, I say to you,
as you did it to
the least of these my brethren,
you did it to Me."

                   Matthew 25.40

We all have dirty grout in our lives, those things through which God equips us, hard things that God uses for great good in the lives of others.  It's not about the grout, but scrubbing through layers of built-up pride.  And perhaps, spending too little time on my knees before Him.  There is nothing that Christ cannot redeem.

What I do may never be noticed, what I do can be undone in ten minutes, but what God does through me --and in me --impacts in ways I am not old enough to understand.  I have only to be faithful to Him.   A blessing never bears a singular purpose.

It is not so much the task at hand, but the radical alteration of my heart He desires.

...it seemed to me a wearisome task,
until I went
        into the sanctuary of God...

                        Psalm 73. 16-17