Washboard Failures
Today I experimented with a washboard, and succeeded in several things:
Somehow making the clothes dirtier than they were to start with.
Rubbing glitter from my shirt on to my brother’s shirts.
Tearing a hole in my brother’s shirt.
Turning the water blue.
Making my hands sore and red.
Haven’t told my brother yet…
And then I cheated at the end by using a hose to rinse the soap off and putting the clothes in a wringer to dry.
It was fun, even though a failure.
Now I understand why Mondays used to be dedicated to washing clothes. I washed five articles of clothing that weren’t even too dirty, and it took me over an hour. I didn’t carry the water from the well or heat the water on a fire either.
As the world has progressed to washing machines, washing the clothes has become a simple task, and the meaning of the following verses have been lost:
Psalm 51:7
Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out clean,
scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life – The Message
Psalm 51:10
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me. – ESV
Becoming “whiter than snow” and clean in God’s eyes is a process. It’s more than chucking a pile of dirty clothes in a washing machine for a thirty-minute cycle. Using a washboard to wash clothes helped me realise how long of a process it is. It’s more like what Zechariah 13:9 mentions.
Zechariah 13:9
And I will put this third into the fire,
and refine them as one refines silver,
and test them as gold is tested. – ESV
New year’s resolutions often focus on physical things; like eating less junk food and exercising more. Both of those physically cleanse our body, but maybe we need a spiritual cleansing too.
Malachi 3:2-3
[Jesus will] be like the strongest…soap at the laundry. He’ll take His place as a refiner of silver, as a cleanser of dirty clothes. – The Message
