ezra 10

There's not wanting to spend your time cleaning and then there's things we just don't want to tackle. They are hard, the thought of dealing with them is exhausting, perhaps both physically an mentally. Last year we had to pack up our whole house and move away from the life we'd known for nine years and move the farthest west most of us had ever been. It was hard. I didn't want to pack it up. I wanted to stay where I was. And so I avoided it until I had to get it all done in two weeks.  

Ezra 10 is a tough chapter. It deals with the intermarriage between the Israelites and the inhabitants of the land that they were in. At first glance, it feels super cringy because basically the consensus is to just get rid of the foreign wives and their children. What a note to end on! Yikes. It seems pretty rough, but looking at other scripture gives us some context. Joseph married an Egyptian. Moses married a Midianite. Ruth and Rahab were foreigners who married Israelites and are named in the lineage of Jesus. The issue here is not that these women were foreigners. Issue number one is that they were idol worshippers who weren't interested in serving God. They were women who chose to hold onto their idols at all costs. Issue number two is that the Israelites had disobeyed God and there were far reaching consequences of their disobedience. Our sin rarely only affects us. 

The entire tone of chapter 10 leads me to believe that nobody liked what went down. It was a bad situation from start to finish, but a necessary one. What difficult things need to be cleaned out of your life. What idolatry do you need to confess? What hard steps do you need to take? Spend some time today asking God to reveal the areas of your life that may need a deep clean. It will be hard, but worth it in the end. 

tip:

On our last day in Ezra, how does all of this relate to managing our homes? We could talk about deep cleaning things, but to be honest, you can have the cleanest house in the world, but if you're heart and your home are filled with idols, it won't matter. We'll be no different than the Pharisees that Jesus talks to in Matthew 23.  

Before we can manage our homes well, we need to spend some time making sure that our hearts are right with the Lord. This isn't the secret code to get the cleaning fairy to show up, but it will allow for the space to deal with those hard things that sometimes prevent us from being able to even begin a task. 

tool:

Ok, one deep cleaning trick. It's not shiny and new and it might not be Pinterest worthy, but baking soda and Dawn dish soap! I have used it on pots and pans, my sink, the stove and to remove spray paint from my van. Test a small area first to make sure it won't ruin the surface, even though it's fairly gentle.