Sobered Up

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. ~~ Romans 12:3 NIV

I usually keep a clean house. I have a cleaning routine that I go through each week for each room of the house in order to maintain a state of cleanliness.

I thought that if cleanliness is next to godliness then I’m doing alright. I felt as I had conquered an area of my life—housekeeping. I have plenty of other areas to work on by now.

So those were my thoughts until this past week when the Lord sobered me up. My husband and I started “fall” cleaning so we can prepare our house to put on the market as he’s hoping for a transfer soon. Part of this process meant we packed up clutter and moved excess belongings to storage. We also painted a few walls to brighten things up.

In the process of cleaning, I had the vacuum cleaner out with an extension hose to clean the collected dust off of the ceiling fan. As I stepped back and looked, I saw dirt stuck in the “popcorn” texture of the ceiling paint, so I used the soft brush on the end of the vacuum extension and cleaned the dirt off the ceiling around the ceiling fan. I thought what a great job I’ve done.

But then, as I prepared to paint the walls, my husband stood at another place in the room and looked at the ceiling and said, “Now you can see the ceiling around the ceiling fan is white, but the rest of the ceiling is brown.”

I realized that even though I regularly picked up items, dusted the furniture, and vacuumed the floors, I never cleaned the ceiling. I confess, I do not normally look up to clean. With my husband’s help, it took about an hour to clean off the ceiling, little by little with the small brush attachment.

I felt the Lord sobered my judgment of myself through this experience. I’m not as good as a housekeeper as I thought I was. It took a lot of work to clean out our house this week. Through the house cleaning process, I realized I deceived myself.

If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. ~~Galatians 6:3 NIV

Deceit can creep in easily. I thank the Lord, He sobered me up. All that I have and all I do comes from Him. To Him be the glory!