Is cleanliness really next to godliness??

mildew, 2 months of leakage

Often people think that the phrase "cleanliness is next to godliness" is written somewhere in the Scriptures. Sorry to disappoint you, but it's not! However, there is a nugget of truth in this - not that being physically clean makes a person more holy than another person - but in the idea of spiritual cleanliness making you more like God...

Recently, I was visiting someone and saw how filthy and stinky their bathroom was - a bathroom which had recently been totally renovated (an expensive Euro-renovation as we call them here). I thought, "what a shame to have wasted all that money and time and effort to rip everything out and redo it from scratch when just a few years later it's so disgustingly dirty with built-on dirt." It just didn't make sense to me why someone would pour thousands of Euros into completely renovating a bathroom, only to not keep it clean afterward. And to clean it now would take MAJOR effort and a lot of time - and even then, it'd probably never be as clean as it ought to be.

So, now to the main point. The built-up dirt and stains and stink in that new bathroom reminded me of how quickly bad habits, wrong thinking, actions, attitudes, hardness, etc. (a.k.a., sin) in our lives builds up very quickly if we don't keep ourselves "clean" each day. Just as with this nasty bathroom, which was not so long ago brand-new, our hearts and minds and lives have a tendency to get extremely dirty and stinky all too quickly. Anyone who's tried to thoroughly clean an old house and make it look like new, knows how many hours and how much effort it takes (and even then, it's not always 100% successful!). It can be overwhelming to say the least.

To clean up a spill, remove grease splatter, wipe up the floor, clean the toilet immediately after making the mess is super-easy - very little effort or time is required - and afterward things look new again. If one immediately sees and cleans up the mess, it doesn't become a stinky, stubborn stain which is difficult or impossible to remove. But if we wait even a few hours to deal with it, it's already a lot more difficult to take care of. The same is true in our lives. If we learn to immediately recognize and change the bad junk in our lives, it's much easier to deal with because it hasn't yet taken deep root and become a stinky, stubborn habit. However, if we put it off, then it becomes harder and harder to remove and even to recognize (we gradually get used to the stink and dirt and don't even realize it).

So, my encouragement is to learn to recognize the nasty stuff and remove it right away (with God's help, of course) before it becomes a chore or an overwhelming, difficult task... It's a much freer, "cleaner" way to live. (and sure, it doesn't hurt to apply this practice to literal cleaning as well - try it, you might just be surprised at how much less time you have to spend on chores because it's not so hard to keep things clean!)