Because we have downstairs neighbors, we have two big area rugs in our apartment. A beige one is in the living room. We inherited a flowered carpet with a black background for the dining room.
Our dog Amsterdam, a golden lab, is allowed in both rooms.
Virtually every day I vacuum that dining room rug. Sure, there are crumbs and stuff, but the real reason is that yellow dog hair is really obvious on the dark carpet.
I vacuum in the living room, too, but not as often and–if I’m honest–not as carefully. It’s really easy to imagine there’s not as much dog hair there, even though there’s no logical reason to expect Amsterdam to shed more in one room than another
As I vacuumed this morning, I mulled over what I needed to do to get my soul cleaned up for Easter. The dog hair made me consider that it’s a lot easier to confess the standout sins–the ones others notice, and the ones that make me feel bad–than to cleanse my heart of the sins that blend in with my everyday life.
So I decided I will spend some time over the next couple of weeks identifying (and confessing) the sins that are easy for me to ignore.
The fact that I don’t pay as much attention to them as to the glaring ones don’t make them any less hairy in God’s sight. He sees it all, even if I choose not to.
