The Cleaning Lady

I've been assigned several cleaning duties here and at first I thought, "well, I'm the new girl so I get stuck with the dirty work that no one else wants to do."  I clean the cafeteria on Thursdays, the church on Fridays, I clean my house every other day, random old dirty things around the Fazenda, and I've waxed enough floors to last a lifetime.   In fact, my house has a reputation of being the cleanest house around with the shiniest floors.  But if you had ever seen my bedroom back home you'd know that I DO NOT like to clean.  

I was grumbling to my broom one day in the church: "No one else has to clean this much.  How is this helping me learn Portuguese?  How is this helping any of the poor people in the neighboring village?  This is not supposed to be my mission!"  Then God reminded how much cleaning I really need to do.  My soul is filthy with years of selfishness, pride, distrust, laziness, jealousy...the list of deadly sins goes on.  It's like years of mold and dust have accumulated on my soul and now is my chance to clean it up.  This IS part of my mission: to bring me closer to God.  Maybe a year of scrubbing & polishing, praying & giving, will have me shining like a diamond, able to reflect the light of Christ everywhere I go.  Maybe in a year I'll be able to see my reflection clearly and recognize who God made me to be. 

...kinda like the Karate Kid who wanted to learn karate but got stuck painting the fence and waxing the cars.  When he complained to his master, his master patiently showed him that he had in fact been teaching him karate all along.  So sometimes we learn the things we want to learn by doing the things we don't want to do. 

wax on, wax off,

Sunny