Dirty, Clean

It’s time to wash dishes. You don’t have to groan—we can make this job fun! Pull up a stool and grab a scrubby. Let’s just see how fast we can make these dishes shine!

Dirty, clean. First the bowls are dirty… now they are clean! Oops! You’d better check this one again. See that spot? Feel this sticky place. This bowl isn’t clean yet. Watch and I will show you how. Scrub, scrub all around the edge—and on the bottom, too. Feel how smooth it is? See it shine? Now it is clean and ready to be used again.

What if you always ate from sticky, slimy bowls? Yuk! you say. That would make me sick! Yes, you have learned not to like dirty things. But I know one little girl who lived in such a dirty “pig pen” house that she didn’t know what it was like to be clean. She thought it was just fine to eat off a sticky table with her fingers and walk all over the laundry and toys. Then she was taken care of by a lady who wanted her to be clean. “Clean up your room,” she said, but the little girl never did. Soon the floor was covered with books and clothes and toys. The lady decided that she must show the little girl what a clean room was like. So every day she helped her pick up things and put them away. “Now it is clean!” she said. Soon the little girl began to learn what clean was. I hope she will like it so well that she won’t want to live in a pig pen again!

Cleaning is an important job, isn’t it? If we really want clean clothes to wear and clean floors to walk on, we have to get rid of the dirt right away. Most important of all is getting rid of the dirty things inside of us. Just like you hate eating off dirty dishes, God hates evil in people’s hearts. What about you? Do you know what it is like to have your heart and mind made clean?

Maybe you are like the little girl who lived in the pig pen house. You think and say mean things, tell lies, or just think about yourself. When someone tells you to be kind and honest, you don’t really know what that means. But there is a clean way to live, and that’s why God sent His Son to show us what it is like. Jesus always told the truth and was kind and caring. His heart was clean, and he hated everything evil. Do you know anyone who lives like that? God wants to take all the dirty, unclean things out of your heart so you can be clean, too. He wants you to hate evil and love being clean—just like He does.