"Hustle and bustle" is used more at this time of the year than any other. The season brings scurrying around, flitting from here to there, and a wide range of activity-juggling. Presents are bought, decorations are put up, parties are attended. This is all added to the busyness of regular life.
for a couple parties I will be hosting.
Last Saturday I worked all day getting my house cleaned in preparation for a couple parties I am hosting. From sunup to sundown, I gradually checked off my to-do list: vacuuming, dusting, sweeping, mopping, laundry, finishing decorations, and lots more.
In the middle of my cleaning day, I glanced at my kitchen tile and decided I had just enough time to touch up the grout. As mentioned in a previous post, it's a light color and gets dirty quickly. Because of the aforementioned paint spill, I now have experience with this fairly quick procedure using my handy-dandy tube of re-grout and a toothbrush.
I went to the supply closet and spotted my grout toothbrush beside what I thought to be the re-grout tube. I quickly grabbed them both and set to work. Within the first few minutes I noticed that the re-grout didn't seem to be working as well as last time. It's been a few months, but I clearly remembered it instantly looking better. This was not doing the job. So I scrubbed a little harder and went on. For the next 20 minutes, I continued to scrub in hopes that when it dried it would turn out like I remembered. In addition, when I first started the process, I noticed that something a little like coconut - kinda beachy, even. Hmmmm. That's weird, I thought. But I pressed on, too busy to stop and figure it out. Three-fourths of the way through being finished with the job, I stopped what I was doing because the coconut smell was very definite, and it finally struck me how odd that was. Why would re-grout smell like the beach? It was at that moment that I turned the tube over in my hand for the first time in this process and took a good look. The tube that I had been using to freshen my grout was SUNSCREEN!!! What!!?!?
In the "hustle and bustle" of cleaning, I hadn't even taken the time to make sure that I had grabbed the right product to do the job. Seriously? At that moment, I stopped, sat square on my bottom in the kitchen floor, and took a good look at the the whole situation. I couldn't help but see the ridiculousness of it all. And then I had a good laugh at myself! What a goofy mistake.
This instantly reminded me of the Christmas season for many of us. Parties, decorations, pictures with Santa, shopping, presents, travel, baking, more parties, family get-togethers, more shopping, wrapping, ...and the list goes on. None of those represent bad things. However, when they come before the true meaning of the holiday, it's like using sunscreen to clean your grout.
Holidays and seasons are great times to celebrate. I believe God intends for us to celebrate and enjoys when we use celebrations to remind us of Him. There are more than a few recordings of feasts and celebrations in the bible. Those times were specifically meant for God's people to reflect and remember what He had done for them. Christmas is a perfect time for us to do that. It's an opportunity to remember that without the baby born in the manger, fully man and fully God, we would have no sacrificial Lamb to take away the sins of the world.
Ultimately there was nothing wrong with cleaning my grout, just like there's nothing wrong with presents and shopping and parties during the Christmas season. But we must be careful not to make much of the season without making the most of the Savior. Let's don't make the mistake of using this season to focus on anything else before Him.
May all of us fully celebrate the Savior this season. May we take time to slow down and breathe deep, taking in Who He is. May we speak more of Him than Santa. May we spend as much time in meditating on His glory than where we will next put our Elf on the Shelf. May we first read the Christmas Story (Luke 2) before reading Up on the Housetop. May we pass down to our children not just the joy of getting presents on Christmas morning, but the idea that we give to others because He first gave. Otherwise, it's like cleaning the grout with sunscreen.
No comments:
Post a Comment