We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
Isaiah 64:6
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
Romans 3:23-24
You might think I am nuts, gross, or whatever for writing about poo. But let's face it, mom's deal with it. It's better to laugh about it and put it all out there, right? I am here to be transparent and deliver the words the Lord gives me.
If you read last week's post about poo, you will recall how I ultimately compared our sin to 'poo'.
With 3 boys, poo seems to be a common visual, conversational topic, theme, etc. Someone is either doing it or talking about it 90% of my day. True story. In fact, Lincoln has his own special phrase-- "Poopy Socks" that he has made up and uses it to name all his favorite stuffed animals.
This week's poo story involves the baby. Somehow these things also always happen when Hubby is not here. It was bath night for the baby. He bathes in my tub. Knox was situated fine and playing happily in the tub. I have a chair in my bathroom where I sit and let Knox play and splash for awhile. It sits about 2 feet away from the tub. Due to the angle and placement of the chair, I can only see him from the waist up peeking out over the tub, I can't see directly in the bottom of the tub. He was just splashing and playing so happy. No cares at all! Mikey adores his baby brother and usually comes in to help while I am bathing him. He walks right over to the tub to hand Knox a toy and immediately with disgust he says"Um, mom. Knox pooped in the tub."
My first thought was "Oh I got this. I will get the shovel and scoop out the pile" (like in last week's post). So I stand up to asses the situation. Nope, there is not a little pile to scoop out. He is literally swimming and splashing in a cesspool! It's like Slumdog Millionaire up in here!
Quick! I pulled him out of the tub and toweled him off leaving him to play naked in the bathroom. Mikey watched him while I ran for my trusty garden trowel and a plastic grocery bag. I start scooping, hoping to fish it all out. The scooping makes it worse! Every piece I attempt to scoop turns into more pieces. I've got a naked cold baby on a tile floor and I am scooping poop out of the tub. This was not the result I was hoping for. The only thing I can think of left to do is just open the drain and wash it all away. The drain will carry it away much easier than I could fish it all out. Because it had sat there in the water, it had spread. And everytime I tried to get rid of it, it spread even more. The only thing I could do was to give in, open up the drain, and start over.
So I let it all run down the drain. I washed the tub with Scrubbing Bubbles. Then I started over. Knox got a new, clean, warm bath and he was good as new. No residue or trace of poo to be seen.
You know where I'm going with this right??
Imagine Knox's poo is our sin. He can't help it. He's a baby. It is his human nature to poo. All of us do it, not just babies. He pooed in the water. After sitting in the water, that poo spread. Sin spreads when it's not handed over to the Lord immediately. I kept trying to clean it out and scoop it up, ultimately making it worse. I can't clean up my sin or anyone else's. When I do that, it just makes it spread and makes it worse. The only person that can clean up that sin is God. So when we finally quit trying to clean up our messes and give in and pull up the drain, we allow him to absorb all that sin. He carries it away like the poo in that drain. He takes it far away, never to return, if we allow him to. Then, we can start with a brand new fresh and clean bath. Does that mean we will never poo or sin again? Absolutely not! Hopefully it just means that we will maybe not do it in the bath next time, or when we do, rather than trying to handle it on our own, we will immediately give in turn it to God. He can carry it away!
What we deserve is to sit there in our sin, Slumdog style, and let it fester. We are nothing without Jesus. But in the same way I would never dream of letting my precious baby swim around in that mess, Jesus loves us that much that he wants to carry away that sin right away, if we will give it to Him.
How amazing is it that our God in Heaven, sent his Son to clean up all our poo so that we can one day live with Him? It's humbling to know that we all have poo. You, me, every single one of us.
What kind of poo are you trying to clean up in your life? Is there something messy and out of control? Is there something that you keep trying to clean up or fix, only to be left with making it worse? What can you give to Jesus to carry away?
