I don’t know if any of you have ever been down the proverbial “rabbit hole” of places like Facebook or YouTube.  Well, I am here to say that I did just that last week.  I do enjoy some content creators on YouTube and after I watched a video, I had intentionally gone to see, I saw a ‘recommended video’ and I have no idea why I clicked on it other than curiosity.
The video that I clicked on was about a guy who cleans rugs for a profession.  It is literally a video with some background music and him cleaning some extremely dirty rugs.  In one video he weighed the rug before and after he cleaned it.  The cleaning included a machine that beat the dust out of it, washing and shampooing it, then using the machine to get the dust out again.  The rug lost about 5kg of weight at the end.
I know…I know.  Not something I would have expected myself to watch, but there was something soothing about the sounds of the cleaning and the calming music he picked to go with it.  When you combine that with seeing something so incredibly dirty from wear and tear and just everyday use gradually become cleaner, was just interesting.
The idea of the rug starting out so worn, dirty and ragged looking then going to something so beautiful and clean was quite the transformation and you know it’s going to look very different in the end.
It quite honestly reminded me of scripture.  We hear words in scripture about being made clean by Jesus.  In 1 John 1:7 we hear these words, “7 but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”  Jesus cleanses us from our sin.  We see similar words in the opening of Hebrews 1:3 and John 15:3.
Jesus takes the worn, the abused, those who have hard lives, those who may feel like they are ready to just be done and thrown out, and Jesus offers them to be made clean.  Jesus offers to give them new life and to put on new clothes.  He washes away all the dirt and the grime.  Takes away the stains and makes it beautiful.
We have all been made new, cleansed by the love of Christ.  May we be so bold as to share that same love, to invite the weary and the worn to come and see what a new life with Jesus is like.
Blessings,
Pastor Brian