Daily Devotion:

Title: Clean

Date: January 24, 2013

During ten-hour workdays, mother sat at her assigned machine, stitching racks of leather shoes. Father spent his long days cutting the leather the many women sewed, stitching shoes they would never wear.  

In the old country he was a ship’s engineer. The man working next to him had been a teacher. In their new country, what mattered was having any job, learning English and making sure their children had opportunity.

There was little money for extra clothes. Each evening, after their four children were in bed, mother carried the bundle of the day's laundry down to the cellar for hand washing. For years, she scrubbed their dirty clothes on a corrugated metal washboard; later on they bought a white enamel-washing tub with a clothes ringer made of two wooden rolling pins. Either way — washing was late night labor. Each school morning their children hurried to the cellar to get their dry clothes off the inside clothesline, or went outside in the warmer weather for the same reason.

At school, the native-born children teased the immigrant children of the factory workers for wearing the same clothes daily. It did not matter that the clothes were clean, well sewn and neatly patched. What mattered was their sameness.

Like little children who see only what is directly before their eyes, whose understanding cannot penetrate the complexities of life, we, too, often judge others by their clothes.

God sees us differently.

Let's Pray: Dear God, clean my heart that I may see with godly eyes this day. Amen.

Here’s a Thought: Create in me a clean heart, O God.*

Source:

*Psalm 51:10