Showers and Repentance

Every morning I need I shower. I believe it is a good ritual. As much as I avoid mud puddles, cess pools, and disposal parks, dirt accumulates on my body. Often times I believe I'm about 25% franklin (from peanuts).

After a long day of any kind of sweating, working, or running, a long shower is always welcome. The heat, the wiping away of my own odors, despite all its work is for one goal : clean. By the way, I don't know how it is for the rest of you, but my shower needs to be hot.

last week in the midst of a hot cleansing, i was struck by this thought. salvation is a cleansing also. It is a wiping away of sins, the forgiveness of sins. It is not a new slate to be written on all over again. It is the magical switching of accounts. Sins I commit become evil investments accredited to Jesus. And I have, for a lifetime, receiving the payments or the interest of Jesus' holy lifetime actions.

So how does the shower like this? For me the shower is a lot like daily repentance. When we first come to believe, the account switchign takes place. The check books have forever been switched. We only receive the goodness of the Lord. Now, sin will always be a part of this world, our skin, bones and flesh, so we will continue to bruise our soul. But time and time again, our lord has left us a means of forgiveness, Jesus. Now though spiritually the sins automatically go to Christ, we are still commanded in Colossians to keep seeking the things above. And we are commanded in Hebrews to run the race set before us, we are also called to lay aside every sin that encumbers us.

Long words to say, there is still work to be done, maybe not on the cosmic level, but on our psyche's level. The cleansing I referring to is repentance, the preservation of holiness. That daily practice of identifying sin, and recognizing the power of God. Must it always be like this? must it always be through sin that god's glory will be seen?

No.

Amazingly enough in the end, the wonderful creation of God will make bodies that can somehow comprehend the glory of God on a magical scale. At that point, will we have to know evil to know good, or will good be made to us self- evident? there will be no tears, no death, no pain, so i take that to mean that there is no sin.

How will this work? to comprehend greatness without a scale? I leave that up to the lord who made senses, who made variation, and magnitude. Example - magnitude is having someone taller and someone shorter. Variation is having yellow, red, black, blue. Which is more colorful? None of them. Which is more black? well, then you have something to measure. And if the lord can make this world, the expanse, the heat transfer, the mystic electromagnetism. I'm sure he will figure out a way to make us know his Glory to the fullest.

BTW - paradox- his Glory is hindered by sin, but it is also magnified by it, because he is greater than sin. Chew on that.

So in the meantime, I will not think of praying as trudgery but wil consider teh confession of sins as the shower of the soul the cleansing of all things evil in my head, in my heart, in my will. And if one day I shall not enjoy the confession of sins, or the meditation of the word, then may I learn how to shower properly to get hte full feeling between showering and not.