Cleaning your cup

So,

The nagging thing about cleanliness is, 'how do i clean my cup?' 'Will I ever be clean?' It can be such a nagging thing that often Christians resort to thinking, 'well, at least jesus loves me when i am dirty, so I guess I'll just stay that way.' This is basically restorting to the idea that God forgives my sin, so it doesn't matter that I keep on sinning.

Romans 6,7 address this when Paul says, 'should I keep on sinning, so that more grace abounds?- NO. Galatians 5 talks about freedom that we receive as Christians, that we no longer need to sin, because God gives us the power to live differently. Freedom means, we are free to choose the right thing.

Needless to say, that being dirty, separates us from others. Nobody likes dirty stuff. Being dirty is discouraging because we feel our inadequacy, our shortcomings. The hope is that God loves us, and can change us. Faith is walking this change out. By walking it out, this faith, that ignores the dirt, and our hopeless, godless emotions, we find that God makes us, clean and makes our dirty lives valuable.

Sunday, I talked about Sunje, the guy doing rock balancing on Queen st. in toronto. I have his website linked here. Check it out.

Ironically I also was listening to CBC on the way home where the program Tapestry, was dealing with the idea of cleanliness in world religions. It is well worth the listen.

The program we went to be a part of is called URBAN X. Check them out, they are a fantastic group who take people to be with and learn from the poor. Challenge yourself to go beyond thinking the poor are projects to be fixed.