I handed her a dust rag and asked her to dust her room. She took it from my hand and walked into her room to complete the task at hand. It wasn’t a big one or one that should take her long but when she came back to me just a few minutes later to tell me that she was finished, I was a little surprised that she completed the task so quickly.

“Wow! You were really fast!” I said to her. As I walked into her room to check her work, I picked up the clock on the dresser and noticed a dust spot where the clock once was. “Hey love, can you come here for a minute?” I asked her, “I need to show you something.” She promptly walked over to me and I said, “Why didn’t you move the items on your dresser and dust under them?” She looked at me with a little confusion. Maybe she was wondering why I would pick up the clock and look under it instead of just glancing over her work and tell her that she did a good job. “When you dust,” I said, “you need to make sure that you remove everything off of the dresser and then dust.” “But no one will ever see it. No one looks at the dust under the clock.” She replied.

When it comes to our lives and the way we live them, we often tidy up the things people see on the outside but internally, everything is dusty. We can hide things that we know people will never see. We live our external lives one way but yet our internal lives can be the total opposite. We want people to see that we have it all together. That when they look at our lives, they see this ‘perfect’ life that would never have anything messy in it. That our marriage never has moments where there is friction. That our children are always well behaved. That everything is just the way we want it to look.

We can think that we can get away with it. We think that the nasty thoughts we can have about someone will never be heard. We think that the anger in our hearts will never manifest itself externally so it’s okay to be angry. We think that if we keep everything internal and to ourselves that it will all be okay since it is hidden. The reality is, no matter if no one else ever sees it, God does. He sees the messy parts of us that we would be embarrassed if anyone else saw. He sees the fact that we are just dusting around the objects instead of taking the time to move them off of the table. He sees it all. But in His seeing of it, He is so kind and gentle to help us in our weakness. He doesn’t sit on a throne and beat us with a stick when we mess up. He doesn’t laugh at us or call us names. We have a Father who is kind and gracious. He is loving but He is also just. We deserve suffering and pain after death but He came and paid the price for death so that we can have the free gift of eternal life. He died a death that we deserved to die.

“I know no one probably will never come into your room and lift up your clock to see if it’s been dusted under but it’s important that you clean to the best of your ability. That you take the time to move the objects and put in the effort. Life is messy and often there are things in our own lives that we need to pick up and dust off. Is it always easy? No, but even if no one else ever sees it, The Lord see it and in the end, that’s all that matters.” I said to her as we finished dusting her room together.

There are so many times in our everyday moments that we have the opportunity to speak Christ into the lives of our children but it’s also a reminder to me that life isn’t about me and my happiness or contentment. It’s about Christ and serving Him even when I don’t feel like moving the clock to dust under it.