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My mother tells a story about me. I don’t remember it, but on the last day of school in second grade, my teacher read a poem to the class. The poem was all about the joys of summer for a child. You know, going barefoot – that sort of thing. I must have taken the poem to heart! It seems one of the joys mentioned was not needing to take baths. Mom says that she had to work hard to convince me at the beginning of that summer to bathe! It didn’t matter what my teacher had read! Mrs. Fuller wanted her boy to get clean!
This concept of being clean is in the Beatitude found in Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (NIV) The word pure basically means clean. The same word is used in Matthew 27:59 to describe the linen cloth Joseph of Arimathea used to wrap the body of Jesus for burial. It was a clean cloth.
We understand what clean means when we think of clothing. It means no dirt, no stains, no spots of any kind. We can purchase all kinds of products to clean our clothes – or our bodies and our hair. We also know how important cleanliness is to food preparation, drug manufacturing and medical procedures.
With all this emphasis on outward cleanliness, have we missed the importance of our hearts? Remember, focus on being pure in heart!
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Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.