Oh what a relief it is!

Warning, what you are about to read my seem, uhhh inappropriate… but here goes anyway…

a friend wrote and gave me a full description of herself getting ready for the dreaded Colonoscopy! Laxatives, cleanses, drinking more horrible liquid, having to do laundry every time she sneezes or coughs! The worst is that this victim of medicine has to be up at 5 AM to take two more enemas, all to have a scope run into her colon to see if there are any problems in there! I had to laugh, nothing that has happened to me in a long time could compare with all the angst of this preparation! 

The things we have to do to prepare sometimes outweigh the fun of what we are preparing for! 

Getting ready for Christmas can become such a strain that we just want to can the whole Holiday and stay in bed all day! 

God never intended for us to put ourselves through all the mess we insist on doing. He gave us Jesus, the gift that keeps on giving! This is the gift that gives us a cleanse that is more complete than the dreaded colon cleanse!

1 John 3:21-24 And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God! We’re able to stretch our hands out and receive what we asked for because we’re doing what he said, doing what pleases him. Again, this is God’s command: to believe in his personally named Son, Jesus Christ. He told us to love each other, in line with the original command. As we keep his commands, we live deeply and surely in him, and he lives in us. And this is how we experience his deep and abiding presence in us: by the Spirit he gave us.

So how do we go about having a massive cleansing so that we can be clean for the spiritual colonoscopy? 

Isaiah 1:18 Come now, let’s settle this, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool.

I didn’t see anything about a laxative in that, did you?

Jeremiah 17:9-10 The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.

We can be cleansed of all the uglies that are in us and then free at last, we can say, “Oh what a relief it is!”

Sorry for the crude analogy… just couldn’t help myself! 

Merry Christmas!