A certain pandemic has caused lots of people to all of a sudden do school at home. Back when I was at school I did home schooling so doing school at home is kinda what I always did. This post contains no advice but I do have a fun story related to home schooling and the spread of disease.
Many many years ago when the internet was still newish I was doing a course which required sending off assignments using physical letters in the mail. One day I was walking down the the post box, letter in hand, and ready to mail it off.
All of a sudden I sneezed…
Now most sneezes are just a simple sneeze and you move on with your day. This sneeze was not that. This sneeze sent copious amounts of snot all over my arm and envelope with my assignment contained within.
I froze for a second not sure what to do.
Perhaps this is the point where you turn around, walk back home, get a new envelope, and try to post it off again. This is not what I did.
So I continued.
With Snot still dripping from my arm I decided to go onwards and walk to the shops. I arrived at Wyoming Shopping Village, found the toilets, gave my arm a wash in the sink but the letter was paper so I could not exactly run water over it. From memory I tried scraping some snot off with my hand and my t-shirt. This helped to a limited extent but the letter definitely was still a little soggy from snot in sections.
With not many other options coming to mind at the time I put the envelope in the mail box and sent it off. I often wonder if the person receiving the letter noticed any slightly crusty snot stains on the envelope when they opened it. I will probably never know but I got reasonably good marks for the assignment.
The thing is sometimes in life stuff happens. You are walking along and all of a sudden you have snot all over you. Maybe someone did something you. Maybe they bullied you, let you down, or said cruel things about you. Maybe it was actually all your fault, you ended a friendship, you yelled at your parents, maybe you you’ve done things you now regret. Whatever those things are you now feel as though you are left standing by yourself with snot all over you. Perhaps you even feel other people or God will judge you if they see this snot so you try and hide it. The truth is snot is kinda gross so I would normally hide it too.
I have good news for you. The bible says that Jesus has cleaned us, he has taken all that muck, garbage, and snot in our lives and given us an opportunity to be clean in a way we could not do by ourselves.
Having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. (Hebrews 10:22b NIV)
When we trust in Jesus it is like he washes us with with pure water. How good is it to say: Yeah, I had snot all over me. Look how dirty and gross I was. Look at all the the stupid things I’ve done but Jesus cleaned me.