I like to think that if I can just get everything in my life in order, I’ll be in good shape for the rest of my life. This is something I really struggle with. In fact, if we try to do it all at once, we can be sure we won’t succeed, and that leads to more pain than progress. If we work on little pieces at a time, we can make a lot more progress than we can by taking on everything at once. The same kind of process works with personal cleansing. It’s a little here and a little there, and you keep doing those pieces until the whole house is clean. Then you move from the kitchen to another room. You can’t clean your whole house in five minutes. We shouldn’t be intimidated by cleansing. First, we have to make the choice to become clean and put our own effort into being worthy, and second, we accept the cleansing power of Christ. I think the way we become clean has 2 main parts. It’s a choice we have to make every single day. If being clean was easy, we wouldn’t have to be reminded to cleanse ourselves. Bednar, “Clean Hands and a Pure Heart,” 2007 Please notice that both clean hands and a pure heart are required to ascend into the hill of the Lord and to stand in His holy place. This warning from Elder Bednar makes that clear:īrothers and sisters, it is possible for us to have clean hands but not have a pure heart. That doesn’t mean being clean is easy though. Maybe I’m wrong on that, but when I’m asked to be clean, I feel like it’s more achievable than when I’m asked to be perfect. The way I see it, being clean is God’s expectation for us in mortality while being perfect is His expectation for us in eternity. That doesn’t mean we are perfect it means we’re actively working toward perfection. If we live this way consistently, that cleansing can be a daily tidying up instead of infrequent deep cleaning.īeing clean, then, means that we are living and making changes in our lives to be worthy of the Holy Spirit as our constant companion. Bednar, “Clean Hands and a Pure Heart,” 2007īasically, if we live so that the Holy Ghost can be present in our lives, we start to become clean. We are commanded and instructed to so live that our fallen nature is changed through the sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost. You can call it other things – repentance, chastisement, change – but I think all of those things add up to this process of cleansing. As mortals, we are learning to become perfect, but we aren’t there yet.Ĭleansing, in my mind, is the process that creates perfection in us. I think we can agree that, while perfection is our long-term goal, it isn’t something we are expected to be while living here on the earth. Or does it mean something else entirely? What Does It Mean to Be Clean? Which has me thinking, what does it really mean to be clean? We read about being clean all the time in the scriptures, but can you just decide to be clean and all of the sudden you are? Or is being clean the same thing as being perfect? But soap and water won’t be as helpful with these things as they will be to the back of my desk chair. It can take sticking my hands right into it to realize what’s actually going on.Īgain, I know right off the top of my head a few things that are at the top of the list that I could clean up and improve in my life. Or deep cleaning.Īnd the thing that’s keeping me from cleaning those things is simply the fact that I don’t notice the dust. See, I think there are plenty of things in my life that I think are clean… but could probably use some tidying up. Not just with getting my hands dirty – but with my spirit. And I wondered how often that actually happens to me. Needless to say, I know the next spot in my room that will be getting a good wipe down with some soap and water.īut immediately after I pulled my hands away from the chair and found my fingertips coated in dark gray dust, I couldn’t help being startled by the contrast of the dust against my moments before clean hands. I use my desk chair pretty often, but I had never noticed it getting dusty because the back is almost always covered with a cardigan that I keep on the chair in case I get cold. Earlier today, I put my hands on the back of my desk chair and, to my surprise (and disgust), found that it was covered in dust.
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