My blog mojo has been missing for a while – and I don’t really know why – but guess I felt I didn’t have anything useful or interesting to say, but here I am – back again.
Since I last blogged on 27th June, although my leg is a lot better, I am still in quite a lot of pain after I have walked for some distance – so I try to do my walking during the day and then rest in the evening. I never thought I would long for the time when I could just get up and do things without thinking about it – and of course, many of us take these things so much for granted, until we can’t do them. However, I have still been taking photographs to upload every day to my Blip journal and at times, this has made me forget the pain in my leg!
One of the things I have missed doing though is – wait for it – housework! I have always enjoyed doing housework, as there is something quite satisfying about cleaning and tidying and although our home is by no means a show home, I feel better when it is looking good. However, as I can’t stand for long periods without pain, I have only been doing the basics – but I have always believed that as long as the sinks, worktops and toilets in the house are clean, then the dust can wait.
My husband has been very good and has “put the cleaner round” as he says, quite often – although not quite as often as I would have done – but I’m not grumbling – every little helps, as they say.
However, today, I had the urge to do a bit more and get rid of some of the grunge that has accumulated, so I found the Kilrock and an old toothbrush and off I went – the kitchen was the first to be done, followed by the sink in the downstairs toilet and then upstairs to the bathroom.
I can now fully understand why, when I go to the hygienist at my dentist’s surgery, and she gets some of the plaque off my teeth, she gives a shout of joy – I was delighted, yet stunned, to find so much limescale, and mucky at that, underneath the taps. I am almost ashamed to show this photograph, but I guess perhaps it might shame me into doing this job more often!
Actually, it does look worse than it was! Well, most of the bits you can see in the sink were hidden, so although the actual sink was clean and is cleaned every day, there were mucky bits stuck fast underneath the taps – and I guess our lives can be something like that!
We can dress up, put on our best clothes, wear a touch of makeup, spray on some perfume and off we go – to all intents and purposes we look good, we feel good and we smell good. But often underneath, there is “stuff” that is either eating away at us or that we keep hidden from those around us – because we are fearful that if they see what we are really like, we will go down in their estimation or they will not want to be seen with us, or even worse will drop us from their circle of friends.
I’m sure the woman caught in adultery, or as the Contemporary English version puts it “…..a woman who had been caught in bed with a man who wasn’t her husband” and who was brought to Jesus, and made to stand in the middle of the crowd, thought that was the end for her, and there were plenty around who were pointing the accusing finger, but the words spoken to her by Jesus stopped them in their tracks:
“If any of you have never sinned,
then go ahead and throw the first stone at her!”
John 8 : 7 Contemporary English Version
Having thought about the grime in the house, I started to think about “good” grime so I went outside and opened up the compost bin – inside there was a load of muck, rubbish and waste matter, but THIS will eventually become garden fertiliser, and although I only saw one little worm, there were also lots of ants running around and working on the stuff in the bin. It was fascinating to watch them, but I didn’t stay for too long as I didn’t want to be bitten!
Then I looked into the next bin, and this is looking good – and is almost ready to be spread on the raised vegetable beds, and under the fruit bushes, to impart all the goodness into the soil ready to feed the crops for next year.
Not content with just looking at the compost, I wandered around looking for other things to photograph, and came across this little marmalade hoverfly on a garlic chive flower – and then managed to get a shot of it just flying off together with another little fly.
So whilst some soiled and grimy things are not acceptable, and need to be cleaned and got rid of, there are other mucky things that are beneficial, and once they have disintegrated and are rejuvenated, they can be put to good use.
If these blackberries, courgettes and runner beans hadn’t had lots of good compost put into the soil to fertilise it last winter, we wouldn’t be picking such wonderful crops now.
However, not only do we need to keep our homes clean and free of grime and dirt, but we also need to ensure that our bodies and our minds are free from the “stuff” that can so easily be absorbed by seeing, hearing and doing things that we are know are wrong and not good for us. Sometimes it’s easy to slip into the mindless watching of television programmes, just because it’s on, or reading unsavoury books and even surfing the internet and finding things that leave an impression on our mind. I know that I need to be more selective in what I watch, read and do and even how I spend my time. Food for thought in the days ahead!
Paul gives this advice, in his letter to the Christians at Philippi, and I need to remember this too:
LIFE IS A CHALLENGE! 