cleaning house for the millionth time

This Friday, my sisters and I spent a couple hours cleaning our house from top to bottom--dusting furniture, cleaning sinks, vacuuming, and scrubbing floors. Just a couple hours after I finished scrubbing the kitchen floor, a few friends came over for a BBQ. We had a great time, enjoyed some great food, and then they headed off to go see a play.

The house now empty, I went to clean up the dishes and found crumbs all over the floor I had just scrubbed a few hours earlier, food on the carpet I had just vacuumed, and a mess in the sink I had just wiped 'til it shined. Of course, it wasn't that the people were extra messy people. That's just what happens when you have people over. and I knew when I was cleaning the house that they were going to come and I was going to have to clean it all up again. But still, I couldn't help but be a little discouraged...I clean the house, just to turn around and find it messy again.

That night, I was talking to my mom about my day:

"So this must be why it gets so frustrating to be a mom and housewife--all your hard work seems pointless in about 5 minutes."

She calmly responded, "Yep! It can get so discouraging, but you know what you have to keep telling yourself? That's what it's for. That's what it's for..."

That's what it means to serve Jesus. Not to always have a clean house, but to diligently clean your house so that people can come, enjoy themselves, feel loved by Jesus, and, yes, make it messy again.

And it's not just with cleaning your house...You make coffee and put it out every Sunday to welcome people at church. and probably without very many thank you's, you keep doing it over and over again. You babysit your little siblings over and over again to bless your parents or free them up to go serve Jesus. and so, even in babysitting, you're serving Him.

Serving Jesus can be a constant cycle of dirty work. And yet, what task could be more glorious or joyous?