Gettin Dirty
As a kid, i was always outside doin somethin. If it’d rained a couple days, I’d take an empty coffee can up and down the dirt road we lived on and “seine” the ditches for small critters, like minnows, crawdads or tadpoles. I’d go down to the ballfield and crawl around under the bleachers lookin for dropped coins, check around the concession stand for coke bottles to sell back to Mr. Walters ( the local store owner ), go explore the creek behind our house for mussels or the occasional snake, see how far i could sail a stiff cow patty or bombard the unlucky wasps who were trespassing under the roof of the barn. If i didn’t come home at the end of the day covered in dirt, i didn’t do my job. We had no shower, so the bathwater looked like i was bathing in a mud puddle before i was done…( i think that may be why i take only showers today…bathing in my own filth doesn’t make good sense 🤔 ). If i was anything, i was a full-blooded boy. Dirt didn’t bother me and all my pants had patches on the knees. As an adult, there ain’t too many meals that i eat that SOMETHIN dont land on my shirt…( funny how it’s usually above my bellybutton and just below my chest ). I’ve stained many a shirt in my day. I wonder if God gets as tired of washing our “sin”stains, as our mamas and our wives do our clothes stains ? Sure…we do good for awhile, but something will trip us up, cause us to slip, and once again, we’ll be asking God to forgive us for sinning against Him. It may’ve not even been noticed by anyone else, but WE knew…and GOD knew. We ought never get comfortable about sinnin. Gettin dirty as a kid…gettin dirty while workin or playin hard, is expected…but to deliberately wallow in the filth of sin, or to dabble in disobedience until we wind up staining our character … that’s unacceptable for the one that calls Jesus, “Lord”. It’s our duty, as a son or daughter of The King of kings, to remain loyal and obedient unto Him. Our ways and our speech oughta reflect His purity and glory as the noonday sun on a hot July day in Mississippi. People ought not hear us praisin God on Sundays and cussin the other six days of the week. We oughta treat our spouses with the love, honor and respect that God expects … not just Sunday while at church, but all the other days of the week when outside those walls. Our kids and grandkids oughta never haveta be ashamed to say, “Yeah…that’s my aunt, uncle, dad, mom, pep or Mimi “… because we lived what we believed and THAT was who we were … all praise to Jesus, our Lord and Savior ! The Psalmist puts it like this : “How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. I seek you with all my heart, don’t let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that i might not sin against you” ( Psalm 119:9-11 ). If His word ain’t important enough to us to study and follow daily, we can count on staying dirty and being a disappointment to them that need us to be otherwise.