Diapers in the Wash

    I am going to give any new parents out there a little advice.  It is important so I need you to pay close attention.  Don’t wash disposable diapers in the washing machine with your clothes.  Pampers and jeans DON’T mix.  Here is what happened, I opened the washing machine to be a great husband and help my wife with the kids laundry, we have three kids so there is always laundry, and as I pull the clothes out there is this fuzzy, grainy, slimy, not sure how to explain it, stuff all over the clothes.  I ask my wife, “Baby, what in the world is all over these clothes?”  She comes and looks and says, “I washed a diaper with the clothes.”  To which I reply, “On purpose???”  For which I get a smack on the arm, I get hit a lot!!  Generally I deserve it.  She says,”No not on purpose, one of the kids must have thrown it in there.”  WHOA, whoa, whoa, I can’t blame the kids when I pass gas but she can blame them for this.  That is wrong on several different levels.

Here come the fun part.  She tells me all the clothes have to be taken outside and each one has to be shaken out, turned inside out and shaken out again.  She, of coarse, has a headache or some other debilitating sickness, so I gamely say, “I’ll do it Honey.”  She smiles a knowing smile and walks away.

I get all the clothes out of the wash and go out on the porch and begin to shake the clotes out.  This is a horrible job.  Each piece of clothing has to be shook out individually, remember these are kids clothes, which means there are approximately 1,352 pieces of clothing in the laundry basket.  Onsies, long sleve onsies, jeans ( with lots of pockets that have to be turned inside out), sweaters and jackets with hoods, socks, more socks and socks after that.  I think you get the picture.  I was out there for what seemed like an hour.  The other problem is that as you shake the clothes out the little diaper boogers fly all over the place, on me, in my hair, on my glasses.  Nasty work.  Thankfully it was a pee diaper and not the alternative!

I got to thinking, isn’t our spiritual life the same way?  Stay with me for a minute and it will make sense, or at least more sense than it does now.  Lets say the diaper represent sin and the clothes represent different areas of our life and the washing machine is the world.

We are going through our cycle of life and somehow a diaper of sin gets thrown in, a few minutes later, boom, it explodes and shoots sin boogers all over us.  They are every where, in the creases, in the folds, in all the cracks and crevasses.  The only way to get rid of them is to stop the cycle and shake each part of your life out, turn it inside out and shake it out again.  We should constantly be examining ourselves for sin boogers.  The Bible tells us in Romans 3:23 “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.”  We all have sin boogers, not one of us is perfect.  But that is ok, God gave us a way to get rid of sin, in Romans 6:23 He tells us “the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”

If you are already a Christ-Follower you should always check the laundry of life to see where the sin boogers are.  Maybe they are in your work laundry.  You should be living right at work but your not.  You claw your way to the top, stepping on anyone that gets in the way, or maybe you steal from work, pens, tools, how about time?  When you should be working your goofing off.  Maybe it’s your home laundry,  you should be spending time with your family but you are always out with friends or at the bar. How about your marriage laundry, are you washing someone else’s clothes with yours?  Then there is the internet laundry, did you visit a site by accident and then another and then another?  Take a look at your laundry, are there sin boogers on it?  Does it need to be shaken out and rewashed?  Stop the wash cycle and take a break, look at each piece carefully, sometimes sin is very small and hides from you.  Once the sin is found the only thing left is to shake it out, ask God for forgiveness.  1 John 1:9 says “But if we confess our sins, he will forgive our sins, because we can trust God to do what is right. He will cleanse us from all the wrongs we have done.”

If you are not a Christ-Follower and would like some more info on becoming one go here,  Christ-Follower.

Remember- Sin is the path of least resistance, but God’s forgiveness is the way to a fulfilled existence!