Easily Excitable

You know what I find disappointing about cleaning? 

Things always get dirty again. 

Last weekend, the weather was everything I don’t like: rainy, misty, and cold: as a sunshine and warm-weather lover, I was unimpressed.

The upside was that it gave us time to clean the house.

In addition to that time spent cleaning, we got to watch the Dawgs win the SEC Championship and (more importantly) spend time with friends to boot. 

So a bad weekend? Not at all. 

But a dreary one? For sure. 

rain brings with it all the trappings for a mess.

This is doubled when you have laminate floors. 

It’s tripled when you have a grass driveway. 

It’s quadrupled and pushed to its limit when you have a lovable, yet large, puppy dog who also calls the singlewide his home. 

So, Friday? Trey vacuumed. 

Saturday? I  vacuumed. 

Sunday? I vacuumed. 

Monday? I vacuumed. 

Today? The floor needs another go ‘round with the Dyson.

It wouldn’t be so bad if that weren’t the case with everything, but alas: all clean things trend (at an alarmingly-fast rate) towards dirty. 

Rooms get disorganized, clothes hampers get filled, showers get soap-scummed, and counters get cluttered.

And, clean as you might (and clean with all your might), you will never be able to establish your home as ‘clean forever.’

Maybe that’s why many of us enjoy the looks of Southern Living rooms

Everything is clean: it’s sanitized. 

It’s not real life- we know that- but it sure is pretty to look at. These pictures, videos, and posts are frozen in perfection. 

Those fans won’t need dusting, nor will the baseboards need washing. Forever, those gifts and decorations will sit in a quiet, calm home. 

For all of us plebians out here in Gen Pop? Our space can’t be like that. 

Life has an annoyingly monotonous need for redoing, for fixing, for cleaning up. 

Enter in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. 

Don’t fall asleep: stay with me. I promise it’ll make sense. 

Maybe. 

This is the law of entropy- the idea that everything trends toward falling apart. 

Can you tell I married an engineer? When he reads this, he’ll be proud to know I’ve been taking notes. 

Somewhere across dating and marriage, Trey explained this law to me.

From a scientific standpoint, everything since the dawn of time has been trending toward chaos. Because I like Jesus in everything, here’s how I see it:

Since the fall of man, everything’s been heading downhill. Brokenness compounds. 

Our day-to-day is simply fixing things and trying to create order that eventually breaks down on us. 

A perfect example? Cleaning the floor. It starts out spotless, yet it’ll always get dirty. 

Every area of life is like that. 

All things must be kept up in an interminable rinse-and-repeat cycle. 

This is the cycle that had King Solomon himself throwing his hands and crying out, “Meaningless!” as he lamented that there’s nothing new under the sun. 

He was spot on. 

Even a semi-creative act like writing? Repetitive. 

It’s the same process of trying to create order out of chaos: there are chaotic thoughts that need to be turned into *somewhat* understandable ideas. 

But it has to happen every week: 

Same build-up of thoughts,

Same process of trying to order them, 

Same tendency to touch on ideas that I’ve already used, 

Same worries about sounding canned, too fake, or outright unclear.

In short? Everything breaks down.

Jeans rip. 

Shirts get stained. 

Drains get clogged. 

School copiers? They turn to absolute shambles. 

This isn’t just a ‘material’ thing: it applies to us humans, too. 

On a daily basis, I get tired: my energy wears down. 

I’m more likely now to pull a muscle when I try to race Trey. 

If I don’t work out for a while, I lose more ground than I would have 10 years ago. 

It’s harder for me to fall asleep now that it was at 21. 

Even our bodies tend toward chaos. 

Every day could be seen as an effort to stave off inevitable chaos.

The daily grind is monotonous, exhausting, and tiring, because, try as we may, we will always have to start again tomorrow. 

Then, to add to that, there are small glimpses of perfection that never seem to reoccur. 

Do we all feel the discomfort along with that? 

I think we do: that’s why we take trips.

It’s the reason why we spend money to make memories: we want to feel something magical, something out of the ordinary.

And then, we remember as we pack our clothes, that we’re heading back to the real world. That’s one of the reasons why, on the last day of a trip, it’s hard to enjoy the day itself without thinking about packing and unpacking. 

Because then? The perfection is gone: you’re back to the mundane, the repetitive, the ordinary. 

Maybe that’s why we love Christmas, why we’re so eager to get out all of the decorations and kick off the celebrations. 

For a month or more, everything is special. 

These are two feelings: 

On one hand, there is a repetitive nature to all things in life- the understanding that we will have to do and redo. 

And yet the flip side of that is this: there are moments that we want to capture and never leave- moments we’d like to stay in forever, thank you very much. 

But we don’t get that.

Things devolve back into monotony before we can really raise too much of a fuss. 

Both feelings lead us to the same place. 

And that place, I promise, doesn’t have to be a deep depression.

These feelings, these questions about the meaning of all this? 

They lead us to the feet of Jesus. 

The desire for perfection? The desire for one-and-done? 

I believe that’s our God-designed craving for our Creator. 

I started thinking about this this past week. I’ve been studying the book of Hebrews these past few weeks, and it’s been stretching me. But I was struck by this line about Jesus: 

“He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.”

Once for all. 

How could we even imagine that- the one-and-done? Everything in our lives from cleaning to health isn’t one-and-done. 

These require repetitive care. 

Of our physical lives, only birth and death are single instances.. 

And yet, there was Jesus. And through him? One-and-done became reality. 

Jesus is finality: He is permanence in the highest. 

And He is order, in stark contrast to our chaos.

His sacrifice for our sins? It was once for all because His life? It was perfect. 

Which leads us to this: 

Our desire for earthly perfection? He provides perfectly for that as well.

He is perfection in its total sense. 

Jesus is the answer to every question and the fulfillment of our every desire. 

He is the One that was enough: He is permanence in the flesh. 

There is no repeating: there is only His single sacrifice that was sufficient. He who lives forever is and was perfect in His offering. 

Our human hearts long for that staying-power and dependability, and there is only One who offers it. 

Jesus is the exact opposite of us in every way. 

Yet still, the mind-boggling fact is that He was made up of the same stuff we are.

Both God and Man- He wore the same flesh as us, yet He didn’t give into the desires of the flesh. 

That’s the only way He could become our High Priest and the perfect sacrifice for our sin: like must substitute for like- flesh for flesh- yet that sacrifice must be perfect. 

Like us, yet far and away different. 

Words fall short for such a miracle.

Jesus was born that He would give His life for me- 

That He would be the perfection I’ll never be able to attain. 

Jesus, our High Priest:

He is “holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens”

He rules “on the basis of the power of an indestructible life.”

What’s more, He’ll never die but “live forever, always able to intercede for His people.”

He intercedes for me. His blood was spilled for my atonement. 

As a human, I’m perishable: at best, I’ll get 90ish years of this life. 

Some of those years will be spent longing for those impossible things: 

-that houses wouldn’t get dirty.

-that knees had no expiration date.

-that dogs lived forever.

-that those we love wouldn’t die. 

And all that wishing and understanding will continually lead me to this place: 

I have nothing solid in this life to sustain me, save for my Jesus. 

And praise God, He is the great High Priest- 

The One who saw my life set for judgment-

The One who knew I was destined for expulsion from the throneroom of heaven-

The One who knew I was headed on a path that would end with eternity apart from Himself-

 And the One who covered my soul with his body and cried out, “Take me instead!”

Permanent and perfect in His offering. 

Understanding of my struggles,

Aware of my sin.,

Yet willing to die on my behalf. 

What a Savior.