Do You Clean Up after yourself?

​I think we all have some tasks within our jobs or chores around the house we would rather not do. Sometimes we put on a good face and attack these with a great attitude. Other times we get irritated, frustrated or possibly even mad about having to do this. One of the things I struggle with sometimes is cleaning out the bleachers.

After home basketball games, at the High School where I coach and work, I take the time to try to clean up the bleachers or at least get as many of the big items as I can and throw them in the garbage. After a late game Friday night I decided to do it Saturday before people started arriving for the games that day. I think I hit the point of frustration when I found a dirty diaper left in the bleachers. I thought to myself, why can’t people clean up after themselves?

Later that weekend I thought about how my frustration was getting the better of me in this instance. The thought of "why can’t people clean up after themselves" just kept running through my head. That’s when I knew I was going to write about these thoughts. My thoughts led me to the reality that people can’t clean up after themselves. None of us can. We have a sin problem that no matter how hard we try we can’t clean-up for ourselves.

The amazing thing is Jesus never said He wouldn’t clean-up for us, he never got frustrated with the task, and he showed us how we are supposed to serve others in this way. Not only did Jesus clean-up our sin, he also did some cleaning that shouldn’t have been his responsibility.

In John 13 we read how Jesus cleaned His disciple’s feet. This was the job of a servant, but our Lord and King ended up on His knees doing the clean-up. If Jesus can do this for me, cleaning up the bleachers doesn’t seem like such a big deal.