Washboards & Washing Machines

The stretch of road near my day job is a half-mile of un-striped asphalt, pitted with dips and cracks and crevices. The rest of the road (under a different transportation jurisdiction) is actually very nice. Unfortunately, the washboard section is the only way to our building. For me and my co-workers, getting to work every day means testing our car suspension systems.

Today, as I was driving on it, I noticed that who ever maintains the road, (though I use “maintains” loosely — as they probably do) had covered up a few of the larger dips with fresh asphalt.

Argh!

It doesn’t need patched!

What it needs is the current pavement broken up, the road leveled, repaved, and striped. Everyone that I work with would probably concur that this needs to be done. (Should it also mean that we can’t get to work and need to take a few days off, well, we’d be happy to make that sacrifice.)

As I was pitched around in my seat like I was in a washing machine, I thought to myself, “There’s a spiritual application in here somewhere!”

Spot Clean or Deep Cleansing

It’s so easy to make the gospel about behavior modification. In fact, it is very easy for me to look at unsaved people and think “that person lies/fornicates/cheats/is a jerk; they need Jesus.”

Well, yes, they do, but not because they need to just stop lying, sleeping around or cheating. They need Jesus because they are walking a lonely, broken road with the final destination being hell.

So, no, getting saved isn’t about having God just patch over rough spots and calling it a day.

Being a Christian is about having Jesus come in with a bulldozer and rip up the old road and begin paving a new one.

That doesn’t mean that we’re going to be perfect anytime on this earth. Nope. Nope, nope. I’m becoming convinced in my sanctification journey, that becoming more like Christ every day is just seeing every day even more how unlike Christ I am. Every day it feels like “oh great, I struggle with that sin too.”

Uprooting the sin nature for a new Christ-like nature is a painful, lifelong process. And I thought road construction in Chicagoland took forever.

(Well, okay, I might have something there.)

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

(Psalm 51:7 NKJV)

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.