Lessons from the Laundry Room

When a household chore teaches me something deeply profound about life, I'm usually torn between happiness at the "wow" moment and mild annoyance that it came in the midst of scrubbing, cleaning or ironing something.

Yesterday I went into the laundry room and suddenly realized that I forgot to put a load of towels into the dryer. Uh-oh. Clean towels were not so clean anymore. So I had to wash them again. And as I was starting the washing machine, a Scripture come to my mind.

"When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first." Matthew 12:43-45

My forgotten towels were reinforcing this Scripture. We can wash something, fix something or change something, but if we are not diligent in completing the process, the end result will be worse than the mess we started with. I took some dirty towels, washed them and then failed to finish the chore (getting them in the dryer). The end result could have been mildew and ruined towels all for lack of follow through.

And if this is bad with towels, just imagine how tragic it is when people are involved. Do we say we'll do something and then not do it? Have we left something undone...or unsaid. Even with all of our good intentions and noble motives, have we made a situation worse simply because we failed to see it through to the end? Truthfully, that thought makes me squirm a little bit.

Do you know what God calls this necessary follow through? Faithfulness. Faithfulness means being committed to our task and sticking with it. It means not giving up halfway or when it gets too tough or when we find some new thing that sounds better.

And here's the best part...God is faithful. That's one of His primary attributes. God is always faithful. That means He is committed to seeing us through to the very end. He will never give up on us, or cast us aside when someone else comes along. God is the "author and the finisher of our faith." (Hebrews 12:2) What He has started in us, He will bring to its perfect and glorious completion.