Touching The Pure

It’s not easy keeping your cool when you have 3 boys ages 3 & under screaming at the top of their lungs and your hands are immersed in raw chicken.  You want to yell.  You want to run and discipline.  You want to scoop the baby up into your arms and quiet his tears.  You want to join them and ball your eyes out.

How would I know?  Let me invite you over to my house one day.  It can be interesting, and stressful, and crazy, and wonderful being a mom of three young boys.  But even so.  Among the craziness and among the noise theres that still small voice that speaks, that teaches, that guides, that comforts.  

My hands are in raw chicken.  I can’t go run to see why they’re fighting.  I can’t go pickup the baby or wipe away his tears.  My hands aren’t clean.  But my children are.  When I touch them with my dirty hands I contaminate them.  The germs and bacteria get on them and could make them sick.  

So I finish preparing the chicken.  I wash my hands well.  Then and only then do I go hug, touch, pick up, or even discipline my children.  It’s such a simple concept in the physical.  The Bible even tells us about clean and unclean meat.  God wants us to stay healthy.

But when applied to the heart.  When applied to the spirit.  It seems to get complicated.   Why can a holy God not be in the presence of sin?  Why must we receive His forgiveness and cleansing to be in His presence?  Shouldn’t He accept me the way I am?  

But just as I want my children to be clean and healthy physically and won’t contaminate them by touching them with filthy hands.  God wants us to be clean and healthy inside and out.  He doesn’t want us to be contaminated by our sin.  

Because the pure is no longer pure once it’s come in contact with the impure.  The clean is no longer clean once it’s come in contact with the unclean.

So God, create in us clean, pure, and holy hearts.  Wash us in your forgiveness.  Make us clean.  We want to be in your presence.  We want to see You.  

so that you can distinguish between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean,

Leviticus 10:10

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Matthew 5:8

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.  Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Psalm 51:10-11

Meat that touches anything ceremonially unclean must not be eaten; it must be burned up. As for other meat, anyone ceremonially clean may eat it.

Leviticus 7:19