Hammer on Anvil '

 
The title of this blog is taken from Gungor's wonderful "You Have Me." Please click on the link and listen to it before you continue reading.



Many of us can relate to some of these lyrics. Has your faith ever been "torn to shreds"? Have you ever felt as though your heart was "in the balance"? I have been there. And yes, I have wandered at heaven's gates, but I have also made my bed in hell. The amazing thing is that God never left me.

This past weekend I was reminded of the humbling truth of this song. A couple in our church owns a rental house, and their most recent tenants left abruptly. And oh my goodness -- WHAT they left! I have never seen a house so trashed. As we walked through to assess the damage, I couldn't imagine a family actually living in such conditions.

Several friends and family members came to help clean up the colossal mess. Dirty diapers littered the back porch. Mice scattered when we opened the kitchen cabinets to begin cleaning. I actually had to use a broom to sweep out the cabinets before I could clean. Every time a piece of furniture was moved, we marveled at the amount of garbage underneath.

The tenants of this house couldn't even pay the rent, yet they left behind packages of diapers, two television sets, a laptop computer, a dozen pairs of children's shoes, and several pieces of furniture. What happened that they had to leave so suddenly, with seemingly most of their possessions left behind? It's one thing to live like that if you're an adult, but how can you live in such squalor when you have small children?

The owners of the home had provided cleaning supplies for the tenants, thinking perhaps they couldn't afford them, so it's not that they didn't have the necessary things to keep the house clean. They simply had no respect for the property. Not only did they not pay rent on a regular basis, but they left the house in such a state that the owners will have to spend thousands of dollars fixing it up before it is inhabitable.

I spent most of my time there cleaning the bathroom. The venetian blinds were too grimy to salvage, and when I took them down, I discovered the window had been broken out. My husband went outside and spent a fair amount of time picking up the shattered glass.

When I got down on my hands and knees to clean the linoleum floor, I discovered that two brown spots that I thought were rotted flooring were actually petrified excrement. That's right, folks -- I don't know if it was human or cat dung, but it was dried on so hard that I spent an hour scraping it off with a knife. I would scrape some, spray on some cleaner, scrape some more, spray some more.

That's when God reminded me of this Gungor song. He reminded me of the times in my life when I have made my bed in hell. As I scraped excrement from the floor until I could see the clean flooring, He said to me, "This is what I did for you. I found you wallowing in filth, and I picked you up and washed you with the blood of My Son." I realized then and there that what I was doing was a sacrament -- a symbol of a divine grace and a stupendous spiritual reality. What I started out thinking was a pretty unsavory task turned out to be a wondrous opportunity for God to reveal the depths of His love.

I occasionally have to repent of an arrogant attitude, of listening to Satan's lying voice saying, "This is beneath you." Friends, if God gives us the opportunity to serve Him in some capacity, NOTHING should be beneath us. On the contrary, whatever is done unto Him is a blessed sacrament.