I loved our message in church yesterday. Pastor Justin spoke about Jesus completing a huge healing marathon when the Pharisees headed to see him. They wanted to know why his Disciples had unclean hands. You see, the Pharisees did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah, so they still did a ritual hand washing ceremony before their meal…not for hygienic reasons, but to “wash away their sins and transgressions.” Jesus explained to them that it wasn’t what was on their hands but what was in their hearts.

You’ve heard the expression “Garbage in, garbage out.”? It is a reference to computing…if you do not put the correct URL in the search bar, you are not led to where you intended to go. The same thing happens with our hearts. What we feed our heart comes out our mouth and hands in words and actions. If we feed our hearts violence and hatred then that is what we live…that is what we speak…that is what we do. One of the most difficult things many of us will face this week will be the realization that God loves all of us equally…no matter who we are or what we’ve done. No matter what side of the aisle we sit on politically, God is impartial when it comes to his children. Something I am reminding myself of daily.

I read a beautiful story on Facebook the other day. A woman was celebrating her daughter as she prepared for her first day in middle school the following morning. They bought the uniforms and supplies and a new backpack. Then she sat her daughter down at the table and gave her a plate and a tube of toothpaste. She asked her daughter to squeeze the toothpaste out of the tub and onto the plate…which she did. Then, when she was finished, the mother asked her daughter to put all the toothpaste back into the tube. The daughter protested and said she couldn’t do that…it would never go back and it would never be the same. The wise mother explained that she was about to head into a new phase of her life and would be presented with many opportunities to breathe life or death into the world with her words. She wanted her daughter to be conscious of the irreparable damage her words can cause and to always choose to breath life.

What a beautiful analogy. This is why I don’t watch television. I am not a prude by any stretch of the imagination. But, what is offered on television as “entertainment” these days is largely unappealing to me. And I do not need to see the accident victims’ lifeless bodies in order to have empathy for the loss so I don’t watch the news either. I read so therefore I filter the images I put in my mind and my heart. I prefer to keep the “garbage in” to a minimum so the “garbage out” is (hopefully) minimized as well. I prefer to keep my heart as clean as I can so that my hands do good works…so that my mouth breathes life into the world. And, this world needs all the life it can get breathed into it.

Be the change. ❤️

““Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.””
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭15:17-20‬ ‭NIV‬‬