What a Mess!

         

(todaysparent.com)

“Mom. M-o-m, come see what Josie did. You’re not gonna like it. Come and see,” Heather giggled and sang out. She could hardly keep from laughing right out loud. She ran into her mother’s bedroom to get her out of bed and into Josie’s room. “Up Mom, come on. You’ve got to see what Josie’s done. You’re not ever gonna believe it. You’re not gonna believe that such a little girl could make such a mess. It’s an awful mess, Mom, but you gotta see it, come on!”

          Heather’s mom had barely opened her eyes and was being pulled out of her bed and dragged across the room. The floor was cold under her bare feet, so she pulled back on Heather’s arm and said, “No just hold up one minute here little girl, let me get my slippers on. What’s all this fuss about? How could Josie have made a mess all by herself? Are you sure that this is her mess? She’s still in her crib, she knows better than to get out before I’m up. And you know she wasn’t feeling very good last night. Did you go in there and wake her up to play with you?”

          By now she’d been pulled down the hallway to Josie’s room, Heather just shaking her head all the way. “Nope, Mom, see for yourself. I didn’t even help make this mess. She did a doozy on it all by herself. But Mom, don’t be too mad at her, after all, you said so yourself, she wasn’t feeling all that well last night when you put her to bed.” Being thrust through the doorway into the room of her precious little girl, Mom could smell the mess before she could even see it.

          “Oh, no Josie!” she declared as she made her way over to her crib. “Oh, my little Josie! Sweetheart, what have you done?”

          Hearing her mom’s voice made Josie jump up to a standing position and reach out for her Momma. “Momma? Momma? Get up? Get up?” she laughed.

          Every morning she looked forward to Mommy coming through that doorway, it meant that her time in the crib was up and she could get out and play with her toys, the ones that hadn’t somehow been tossed into her crib by some mysterious sister named Heather. She giggled with glee as Mommy walked closer.

          Mommy was cringing and wrinkling up her nose, “Josie, Josie, Josie! Look at what you’ve done to your crib, and to yourself!”

          Heather stood in the doorway trying not to laugh too loud. “Mom,” she said, “I think she might be feeling a little better. She seems happy enough.”

          “Heather Elaine, just what are you laughing about? You’ve made your share of messes, too!” But as she stood there shaking her head, she had to hold in a laugh of her own. “You look gross Josie!”     

          “Mom, like I said, it’s not completely her fault. I mean, it’s not her fault that she was sick last night. But she didn’t have to play in it.”

          “And someone didn’t have to give her all those toys to dirty, either.” Mom scolded.

          Josie was still standing there with her arms reaching out for Mommy and jumping up and down. “Josie dear, I love you, but Mommy isn’t going to pick you up and snuggle you with lovin’ until she gets you all cleaned up. Okay? Come on, let’s get you out of there. Now honey, don’t touch Mommy, just let Mommy pick you up. Okay? That’s a girl. No - Josie! Don’t kick your feet! Let me get you into the bathtub and you can play in the water. How about that?”

          To Josie, anything was better that staying in that crib any longer. Although the mess didn’t seem to bother her. Fifteen months old wasn’t old enough to know what she’d done or so Mommy kept telling herself. But Heather was eight years old, definitely old enough to have come and get her sooner, and definitely old enough to know better than to put all of those extra toys in there. Heather followed her into the bathroom and watched her mother take Josie’s clothes off and throw them into the toilet to be rinsed out. She said, “After you get all the poop off her, I’ll give her a bath so you can go and clean her crib out.”

          “How nice of you to offer!” Mom said rather sarcastically. “How about if you go down and wash your hands and get yourself a bowl of cereal?”

          Mom had a job on her hands, one that moms don’t look forward to. Some moms actually think that it will never happen to them, until it does. But eventually she got Josie all cleaned up and brought her down and put her in her high chair and gave her a bowl of Cheerios.

          “Now Heather, can you keep an eye on her while I clean her room? Call me if she starts to make another mess, okay?” Heather lowered her head and nodded, trying as hard as she could not to snicker out loud.

          In a little while Mom came down with a smile on her face and announced, “Nothing like a job where you can see the results so quickly first thing in the morning to get you up and moving, right?” She walked over to Josie and picked her up out of the high chair and gave her a really big hug and put her down on the dining room floor to play. Then she walked over to Heather and said, “Do you know how precious you two are to me? I love you so much. No mess could be so bad that it would make me stop loving you!” She hugged her and smiled really big and went into the kitchen. Heather followed her and asked, “How did you know what I was thinking?” Her mom looked down at her and said, “Why? What were you thinking?” Heather shook her head and said, “Never mind, it was silly,” and started to walk off.

          Her mom chided, “Now wait a minute here Missy, what were you thinking? Now you’ve got me curious.”

          “Oh Mom, I just thought that maybe some of that mess was my fault, but some of it was Josie’s fault, but some of it was Mother Nature’s fault, too. Now, you can’t hate Mother Nature, and well, you don’t hate me either.”

          “Of course not, dear,” her mom said as she picked Heather up and sat down with her. “We just had to clean the mess up. I wasn’t going to cuddle Josie all covered with that mess now, was I? I saw you trying not to laugh. You thought it was all kind of funny. No, you thought it was all sorts of funny and I guess I can see your point of view. I didn’t think it was funny, but it’s all cleaned up now and I didn’t love you any less while everything was messy than I do now, sweetheart. Heather hugged her mom again, really tight and then went off to play with her sister. Heather felt a little special. She believed that her mom would love her no matter what. She figured it must be a special kind of love a mom has for her kids.

          A few days later, in her Sunday school class, Heather found it hard to sit still. So far, the class wasn’t very interesting and the little sticker that her teacher had given her saying ‘Jesus Loves Me’ wouldn’t stick to anything anymore, so she squirmed in her seat. “Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me. Is that all they ever tell you here in Sunday school? Okay, so Jesus loves me, but I’ll bet He doesn’t love me like my mom loves me,” she thought. She wanted to tell that to the little girl sitting next to her, but she didn’t want to get caught talking and then have to tell the teacher what she’d said out loud, in front of everybody. So, she just continued to squirm.

          “How much does Jesus love you? Jimmy, how much does Jesus love you?” the teacher asked. “I don’t know, Ms. Wally,” and then he added, just to be funny, “How much does He love you?”

          “Ah,” she said, “He loves me just as much as He loves you! And I’ll tell you how much He loves you. He loves you more than anyone else in the world!”

          “Not more than my momma does,” Heather blurted out.

          “Heather, Jesus loves you so much, let me tell you about what He’s done for all of us, and then you decide, okay? Gosh, none of us are perfect, are we? Can you think of something you did that wrong? You don’t have to tell what it was, but just think about it for a minute. I find myself getting into one mess after another. But Jesus always bails me out.”

          “What do you mean?” Stevie asked.

          “Well, everybody in the world sins. We were born into this world of sin, it’s not our fault really that we’re born into this world, it’s the world God made for us. But the sin nature inside of all of us fell to the temptation of sin a long time ago in the Garden of Eden. When we’re tempted to do something wrong, and we do it, we get ourselves into a mess. It causes trouble for us. Let’s say your mom just baked some chocolate chip cookies and you could smell them all the way in the living room. You walk to the kitchen to see them and your mom says, ‘It’s almost supper time, you can have a few cookies later, okay?’ Now those cookies smell so good that you don’t want to wait, so when mom leaves the room, you are tempted to take a cookie and eat it quickly so she won’t catch you. Now, if you take it, that’s stealing and disobeying your mom. So, you’ve done something wrong, right?” Everyone nodded their little heads.

          “Now, the trouble starts. Mom comes back into the kitchen and asks, ‘Did you eat a cookie?’ You don’t want to get into trouble, so you say ‘no.’ Her eyebrows come down and form a frown a mile wide across her forehead. You know you’re in trouble. Not only did you steal, and get caught, you lied and got caught. See what a mess you’ve gotten yourself into? Now if only you could clean up that mess so your mom wouldn’t be mad at you and punish you. Wouldn’t that be great?”

          By now of course, little Heather is thinking about her and Josie’s mess the other day and how her mom loved her so much, she had cleaned the mess up for her. She wanted to interrupt Ms. Wally and tell her.

          But Ms. Wally went on, “You see, we get ourselves into a mess every time we sin. And we can’t clean the mess up before we get caught because God sees us do it. That’s why we need Jesus. And that’s one of the places that Jesus can use for an opportunity to show us how much He loves us. He does the cleaning up for us!”

          “What do you mean?” asked Stevie, “I don’t understand.”

          The wheels in Heather’s head were turning quickly, she was getting a picture of how much Jesus loves her. She said, “Like, He gives you a bath and washes the mess you made away, so He can pick you up and love you! That’s how much He loves me. Just like my mom!”

          Stevie said, “I still don’t understand.”

          “Well, Stevie,” Ms. Wally started, “Do you know why Jesus had to die on the cross? Do you know that He did it for you?”

          “What do you mean Ms. Wally? Why for me? What good did that do?”

          “Stevie, not just for you, but for all of us. We all have sin all over us, like dirt.”

          “Like poop!” Heather thought.

          “But, unlike dirt, water can’t wash away the sin. It takes something special. Something stronger than Tide or Wisk or Dial soap, even stronger that that strong soap that maybe your father uses out in the garage to wash away greasy dirt.”

          “What’s stronger than soap to clean off a mess?” Heather asked. “Yeah?” agreed Stevie.

          “Oh, something special that only Jesus has. He uses it on us every time we ask Him to clean up the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. Sometimes pride tells us that it wasn’t our fault we sinned, but we weren’t in any hurry to stop playing in the sin.”

          Heather could see Josie playing in her messy crib in her mind.

          “What I mean is, that sometimes we don’t seem to be in any hurry to stop the sinning. Maybe if your mom was out of the room long enough, you took two or three cookies, even though you knew it was wrong when you took the first one.

          “So, what washes sin off of us?” Jimmy piped up.

          “Well this might sound gross, but blood does Jimmy. The blood of Jesus. He died and His blood came out of Him so that our sin won’t send us off to be punished. So, if we ask Jesus to forgive us and we’re sorry we disobeyed; so sorry that we decide that we don’t want to do it anymore, we accept the punishment that Jesus took in our place. That cleans us by the wonder-working power of His Blood, our sins are washed away. He makes us clean like the mess was never on us. He can completely forgive us. The punishment for unforgiven sin is hell, but Jesus already took that punishment for us.”

          Stevie still had questions in his eyes, so Ms. Wally said, “Maybe I’m not making myself clear.”

          “Ms. Wally, can I try?” asked Heather. “I think I know. Like when your mom gives you a bath. She can love you up in her arms again, because you’re not dirty anymore. I know moms can’t stand dirt, so maybe Jesus can’t stand sin. He has to wash us off first.”

          “But with blood?” both Jimmy and Stevie squealed. Ms. Wally didn’t know what to say now. She hesitated for a second or two and then said, “Jimmy, Stevie, do you know what soap is made of? My grandmother used to make her own soap herself. Now I don’t remember just exactly what she did to make the soap, but she used fat or lard, which is like the grease your mom uses in the kitchen. She mixed it with an alkaline substance, maybe lye, which comes from the ashes of plants. Now would you want to wash with that?”

          “Gross!” the whole class said.

          “But it gets you clean, doesn’t it? Now, the blood of Jesus doesn’t actually touch our skin, it isn’t our body that has gotten messy with sin, it’s our soul. You can’t touch your soul, can you? But Jesus can wash it off. Here’s a miracle for you. Jesus takes your heart, which is black with sin before you ask Him to forgive you and He washes it with His red Blood and makes it whiter than snow. How’s that?”

          “I think you lost me,” Stevie said.

          “It doesn’t matter how gross you think the blood is Stevie,” said Heather, “you need it to wash away the mess so Jesus can pick you up in His arms and love on you. Like your mom does. Come on, I understand and the next time I sin, I’m asking Jesus to wash me off with His blood, because I like to be loved on. Everybody does. So, everybody needs to be washed off.”

          “Hey,” spoke up Todd, “my dad said that if a skunk gets you, you have to take a bath in tomato juice. Skunks sure do stink, but I think that God thinks sin smells worse, that’s why tomato juice doesn’t work on it.”

          Everyone started talking at once when Mr. Shatson peeked into the room and said that time was up. All the kids ran for the door. Heather walked slowly past Ms. Wally and said, “I understand, I’m bein’ washed. Today, I think.” Ms. Wally smiled and sat down in her chair.

          After church that morning, Heather asked her mom and dad, “Did you get washed in the blood?” They both laughed and her mother turned to her and said, “Why yes dear, we have been washed in the blood. Did you hear us singing that song in church this morning?”

          “No, what song?” she asked.

          “The song about being washed in the blood,” her mom insisted.

          “No, well, gosh, I guess people do sing in the bathtub, why not sing in a blood bath?” Her dad glanced into the back seat at her and asked, “Have you been washed in the blood?”

          “No, not yet. I gotta wait till I sin. Then I will be. Jesus does it you know. He’s the one who gives you the blood bath. But, you know. Huh? Did you feel it? The blood, I mean?”

          “Well, I felt all warm all over when I knew my sins were forgiven, but there was no blood on my body. Just on my soul,” said her mom.

          “Don’t you wish you could see your soul? Then you’d know when it was dirty and then maybe you could see the blood wash away the sins,” Heather said, giggling.

          “Well,” her dad said, “if we could see our souls, I guess we wouldn’t be walking around so self-righteous. But the Bible is like a neat pair of glasses. When we read it, it points out our sins, shows them to us. We can’t see them with our eyes, but we have to admit that they’re there. If we don’t, we’d never ask for that ‘blood bath’ and so we’d stay dirty.”

          “I bet Jesus would still love us anyways, but He couldn’t pick us up in His arms and hug on us, cause the sin stinks too bad,” Heather said thoughtfully.

          Her mom laughed and said, “Are you thinking about the mess that Josie made the other day?”

          Heather laughed, too, and said, “That must have happened for a reason, so I could understand about getting my messy soul cleaned up, huh?”

          “I guess the Lord can use anything,” her mom said.

          “Since I don’t read the Bible, how do I know my soul is dirty?” Heather asked.

          “Well, in church the preacher tells us what the Bible says, and our teachers tell us what it’s about, but really honey, you need to start reading it for yourself. Someday, somebody might try to convince you of something different and you need to know for yourself what the Bible says. You’re not too young to start reading it. Everyone needs to know what it says for themselves. God can talk directly to you through the Bible. It’s important to read it. That’s why Mommy and I both have our own, and why we bought you the one you have with all the pictures in it. Not just so you can look at the pictures. You know how to read and what you have trouble with, you just come and ask us about it. Okay?” her dad answered.

          By then they were home and her dad said, “Are you ready for that bath?”

          “Dad,” she said, “baths are kind of a private thing, don’t you think? But mom can come.” She and her mother went to her room and talked a little more and Mom answered a few more of her questions and read a few scriptures to her. Then Heather asked Jesus to wash her clean, and He did. Now she’s clean and when she gets a little smudge on her soul, she knows where the bathtub is.