A word about Smudges.
I’ve had occasions in my life when I tried to help my wife as she worked at making our home spotless, by washing our mirrors and windows as my part in the project. And that exercise helped me with a startling realization. Washing windows and mirrors is harder than it looks.
I guess our windows are no better or no worse than everybody else’s. But as I set about my task, it always seems to me like the more I try to clean the smudges and dirt off our windows, the more smeared they get. The harder I scrub, the more smudges seem to show up. No matter how much spray; no matter how hard I wipe, if I am focused on noticing, smudges keep appearing.
What is it about smudges on windows and mirrors do you suppose that makes them so obvious? Anyone who’s done much window washing at all knows that if there’s a streak you missed, if there’s a smudge you haven’t wiped away, it sticks out like the snoot on a hog.
It strikes me that if I’m not careful, I can approach my life the same way I approach washing windows. The window through which I see the world, the mirror or looking glass called me, for a certainty bears its share of smudges. Try as I might to keep things clear, the very act of living life every day leaves streaks and smudges on my visible man. Seems like I can polish one smudge in my life with prayer and almost immediately another smudge appears that needs to be addressed in some other part of my life.
It’s helpful for me, though, if I can imagine my life in God as a two-way mirror. It’s true that on my side of the mirror, if I look closely, every streak of self-importance can be seen. Every smudge that clouds the character of God in my life seems so overwhelming. The apostle Paul noticed the smudges in his life, too. He confessed, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing… Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:19, 24). That’s sort of another way of saying, “Who in the world can wash the windows of my life, when all I see are the smudges?” And yet, the same Paul who despaired of his smudged glass did not stop there. He said, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:25). What Paul could never make clean and clear, Jesus wiped away by his atoning work. As I stand before any mirror, now, I need to remind myself that there is a God who has washed me clean, looking back at me on the other side of my reflection. And he doesn’t see the smudges.