Where do you put your trust?

Saturday morning I spent my time at the church filling the communion trays. This was my day to wash all the trays and during time I had some interesting revelations.

While washing the trays, I found great satisfaction in seeing them come out of the water nice and shiny. They were so clean I could see my face in each of them. One by one I washed, dried, and stacked them on the counter behind me.

When I came back to them, I noticed that the smudge marks on the trays from the bread were still there. But when I took them out of the water....they were gone?
So I washed them as second time focusing a little harder on getting the stains off this time. I put more soap in and made the water even hotter. So hot I couldn't even touch it anymore. I felt this was finally doing the trick. But then, I turn around again, and the trays still have smudges.
I know the trays are very clean and ready for use, but I wasn't content with smudges. I wanted to make them shiny. I wanted to make them like new. But no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get them to go away on my own. I could have used a brillo pad or even steel wool, but those would have just left permanent scratches on the trays and they would have been ruined for good.

I thought to myself "There has to be a lesson in this...there's a lesson in everything" and even as I stood puzzeled, Terry walked in and I had to share with story with him. But I had not yet figured out what the lesson was.

The more I cleaned....the more happy I was that I could see myself in the tray. A shiny beautiful reflection of myself was glaring back each time.
Just putting it in the water was not good enough. I had to really WANT it to go away. I didn't have to work really hard on all of them, but some of them were more smudged than others.

I am so happy that God uses his devine perfection to wash my sins away. It's never hard for Him. I make it harder on myself. The process of scrubbing and using hot water is more of the approach I would use. I'm glad that He makes it so much easier. When I stop and forgive myself in the way He forgives me, life seems to be so much easier.

Stranger things have happned but.....I had put the trays to the side, thinking I may give them one more cleaning. When I came back to them, the smudges were gone. Completely gone.

Some trust in......

I trust in the name of the Lord our God!