I was talking to my sis-in-law last night. They are in the professional, large-buildings (mostly banks) cleaning business with over a hundred employees working for them. Bless their hearts. They are also an \u201cessential\u201d business on the front lines. Because sanitizing standards are amped up, their employees are working double and triple the hours to get their jobs done as banks are requiring sanitizing three times a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She also told me about how God had given her the wisdom, even before the pandemic hit us here in the U.S., to order large quantities of toilet paper and disinfectant for their buildings. Wonder why I didn\u2019t get that memo from God? I know He must be amused at us \u2013 panicking over not enough T.P., disinfectant and hand sanitizers. Among the items my cousins needed as I shopped for them yesterday, were disinfectant wipes and napkins. Nowhere to be found. I chuckled with another shopper as we viewed the paper goods aisle with no toilet paper, paper towels, or napkins. But, rest assured, if you want an Easter basket full of goodies for your kiddos, just go to the paper goods aisle and you\u2019ll find plenty there!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was needing hand sanitizer myself. I’ve had one tiny bottle that I’ve used faithfully when going outside my home. I\u2019ve shopped online and store after store, but none is available. But, what a difference Spring-cleaning makes. I\u2019ve been on a mission to get cabinets and closets cleaned out \u2013 endeavoring to make my \u201cretreat\u201d a successful venture of getting things done that I\u2019ve put off as long as I could. In that quest, lo and behold, you can see in the picture here \u2013 a larger hand sanitizer bottle and several little ones. Up from the grave they arose! Hallelujah!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know I’m wordy. I said all this to get to the point of today\u2019s blog. See that big bottle. It is left over from an ACTS retreat that I served on a couple of years ago. We printed the labels for the hand sanitizers to be placed on our tables. The label included our retreat theme scripture: \u201cWho may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart.\u201d Psalm 24:3-4. And St. Teresa of Calcutta\u2019s quote: \u201cA clean heart can see God, can speak to God, and can see the love of God in others.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, we are doing our best to have clean hands in these times. I wear gloves when I go to the grocery store and use hand sanitizer after. It\u2019s an absolute must for us. But even more critical are those words on the bottle. “Clean hands and pure hearts.” Those are the hands and hearts who know better than to only think about the purity of our external selves. Far greater \u2013 in the light of eternity \u2013 and in the light of letting our lights shine brighter than ever before, is what is in us that might “soil” the relationship we have with God. We do our best to keep our hands and hearts pure and clean because we want to please our Father so much. I\u2019m thinking that we may need to apply some of His Holy sanitizer to our hearts that removes the bitterness, strife, anger, resentment, worry, fear. God’s holy sanitizer cleans all those things away when we pray along with King David: \u201cCreate in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me!\u201d Psalm 51:10<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clean hands. Pure heart. Dear Lord, please apply your Holy sanitizer to my life \u2013 inside and out, today!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was talking to my sis-in-law last night. They are in the professional, large-buildings (mostly banks) cleaning business with over a hundred employees working for them. Bless their hearts. They are also an \u201cessential\u201d business on the front lines. Because sanitizing standards are amped up, their employees are working double and triple the hours to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16635,16851,16943],"tags":[1210,1769,8695,16941,16924,16846,16939,40,16799,3889,2499,3428,3891,16940,8084,1493],"class_list":["post-12131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clean-hands","category-hand-sanitizer","category-pure-heart","tag-blog","tag-christian","tag-clean-heart","tag-covid-19","tag-essential","tag-hand-sanitizer","tag-heart-sanitizer","tag-inspiration","tag-pandemic","tag-psalm-243","tag-psalm-5110","tag-retreat","tag-spring-cleaning","tag-st-teresa","tag-standards","tag-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12133,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12131\/revisions\/12133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}