Today as I looked at my incredibly incredibly incredibly messy apartment, God taught me something I knew, but in a completely new way.
Just a couple of weeks ago, my apartment was fairly clean. Emphasis on fairly. But then there were a few days when I came in late at night and all I wanted to do was vegg or collapse in bed. So naturally, I just took of my shoes, dropped my bag, and took off my jacket and sweaters (yes, plural) in a very un-Mr. Rogers manner. Then there were a few days when I was running a little late to a meeting or a class, and so, things got thrown out of my bag, things got thrown into my bag... yeah pretty chaotic. You get the picture.
I didn't make my room messy all in one sitting. I didn't make my room messy all in one day, or one week for that matter. But little by little, piece by piece, things got a little more cluttered. The problem was that I didn't take the time to go ahead and clean up the growing mess. It was a slight nuisance but instead, I'd just walk around a pile of books on the ground, or ignore the blanket draped messily on the rug. And this continued as the mess grew and grew until today, when I realized, "Hey, this place is absolutely filthy." To me, the interesting thing was that I didn't realize this because my apartment hit a "filthiness limit." It wasn't like I left a wrapper on the table in addition to the existing mess and so with that, the apartment would be deemed unliveable. Just by chance, I took a little time, took a good look around, and finally saw what had been true for at least a good week.
So what did God teach me other than that I can be completely oblivious to my surroundings? As I looked around my room, I realized that it's the same thing with sin in so many ways. We don't sin all in one sitting. Little by little, incident by incident, our lives get cluttered by the sins we commit. And sometimes, instead of going straight to God, confessing those sins (cleaning up), we decide to ignore it. "It's no big deal." "I can deal with it being around." "I'll just walk around it." And it keeps piling up, to the point where suddenly, for no real reason aside from God's leading, we realize, "Hey, I'm filthy!" "Where did all these sins come from?" "How did I let it all become like this?" It's not like God's set a "sin limit" in each person to which if you pass it, a message is automatically sent to your brain saying, "Warning. You've passed the sin limit. Please report to God's throne." I know that in my case, instead, in a real mysterious way, it's like God gives us new eyes to see the current situation from a different perspective, the correct perspective.
"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is -- his good, pleasing and perfect will."--Romans 12:2