pumice stone

Jun 28, 2010

I am cleaning my bathroom today. A bathroom that is so filthy we stopped using it months ago. I couldn’t deal with the mess, the overwhelming need to dejunk it of clothes that don’t fit, fashions that are out of style, beauty products that need to be thrown away, and bath toys that probably need burned. My bathroom is part of my walk-in closet and it has been in utter disarray for at least a year. There are still maternity clothes in there that need put away from 2007! There are clothing sizes from size 14 down to a size 6. There are umpteen numbers of shoes, some of which I haven’t worn for years. The bathroom part of the closet hasn’t been used in a long time. The sink is disgusting, the counter is covered with all sorts of junk, and we can’t even get to the toilet.

I decided it was time for it to be cleaned, dejunked, DI’ed, and sanitized. I decided last week I was going to do it and I have been working on it since then. I have boxed up LOTS of clothes, thrown away oodles of empty and outdated beauty care products, and amassed the largest unmatching sock pile ever.

But the sink? I knew it was a goner. It had layers of slime, layers of gunk, layers of who knows what stuck to the sides. I have tried to clean it a few times over the past year, but nothing I did to it would get those layers off.

Well, today, I decided to try a pumice stone. I had heard the wonders of a pumice stone on toilets, so I thought I would give it a try before I threw the sink out.

To my amazement, it worked…instantly! It cut through all those layers and made the white porcelain shine! It took some elbow grease to keep scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing, but it worked!

After I cleaned the sink, I started working on the counter and I found this quote by Sheri Dew:

Jesus Christ is not our last chance, He is our only chance. He will show us the way because He is the way.

I read it and it hit me hard. I had used the pumice stone as the sink’s last chance. If it didn’t get it clean, I was giving up on it. I had tried everything I knew to clean it and nothing had worked. I was ready to toss it in the garbage and start over with a new sink.

Sometimes we treat God as if He is our last chance. We try other things to get us through life. Try to find happiness in other ways. Even try to get clean in other ways. But in reality, He is not our last chance. He is the only chance we have.

And He will walk with us all the way, teaching us all about 2nd chances and 200th chances. Teaching us how to come clean. Loving us enough to not toss us out and start over with another creation.

He is a bazillion, trillion, megajillion times better than a pumice stone…which as I proved today…is a pretty amazing thing as it is.