Dusty

Look at that thing. Just look at it.
That vaccuum cleaner, known as the ShopVac, has been my best friend while cleaning cabins and battling the moth swarm this week, and today it proved itself to a new level.

This afternoon an owner of a cabin in Aspendell asked me to de-moth his cabin, explaining that the infiltration of our little brown friends was too much for his girlfriend and that they needed professional help. Donning my best professional face, I informed the owner that dealing with moths is typical for my line of work at Cardinal, the job would be no problem, and of course, I am by no means afraid of moths. The cabin owner quickly accepted my help, leaped into his car with his girlfriend and sped down the hill towards Bishop, leaving me to brave the moths.

The interior of the cabin was covered with them. Moving aside furniture revealed a thick carpet of the dead, lifting pictures on the wall unleashed torrents of them, and renegades fluttered around the ceiling, windows, and lights. Orangey blood-like stains were everywhere, the zombie-ish markings of a horror story going on in this cabin. I quickly ditched the pro face.

Steeling myself, I grabbed the ShopVac and worked my way around the cabin, sucking up every moth I could find. As I dug into the deep recesses of moth infested spaces, the air became thick with dust, and I had to stop several times to clear my respiratory system. This cabin had been left alone for a long time, and the dust of disuse was amplified by the dusty residue of a few thousand moth occupants.

The dusty cloud of moths made me think about sin. We can be delusional about ourselves a lot of the time, thinking that we're pretty good people, but meanwhile the sinful areas of our lives are collecting, building up, and growing thicker and thicker. When we finally have to deal with our sin, its this huge messy, dusty grossness and we're almost too overwhelmed to know where to start cleaning.

Sometimes I have an "oh I can fix this myself, I'm a pro" attitude about dealing with my sin, which really just means I am still delusional. I can't deal with my sin myself! This is where the ShopVac comes in. As I was cleaning I realized that the real pro was my handy little tool that sucked up all the mess without me having to touch it or look at it for very long. Its like that with the Lord, I think. We need to acknowledge that we are incapable of dealing with our sin by our own strength and let him do the work of revealing the truth of his love for us that helps us overcome that sin. To me, the ShopVac is a symbol of Jesus walking with us into the dusty corners of our lives, sucking up our mess and then replacing that space with fullness and satisfaction in him.

I'll try to focus on that tomorrow when I go back to clean up after the bug-bomb.