{"id":144,"date":"2014-03-02T16:30:59","date_gmt":"2014-03-02T16:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/?p=144"},"modified":"2014-03-02T16:30:59","modified_gmt":"2014-03-02T16:30:59","slug":"the-problem-with-not-emptying-your-pockets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/2014\/03\/02\/the-problem-with-not-emptying-your-pockets\/","title":{"rendered":"The Problem With Not Emptying Your Pockets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m sure that most, if not all of you will know the frustration of pulling a load of washing out of the machine only to discover that it\u2019s covered in bits of tissue from someone\u2019s pocket.\u00a0 The disaster comes in differing degrees, of course:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Sometimes the offending tissue remains pretty much contained within the pocket, so there are only a few bits stuck to the rest of the load \u2013 predominantly on the garment with the pocket itself. This is annoying, but relatively easy to deal with \u2013 you can simply pick the bits off with your fingers.<\/li>\n<li>Sometimes the tissue has been shredded by the washing cycle into a large number of pieces which are spread throughout the wash.\u00a0 This is deeply frustrating because collecting all the little bits is time-consuming, and you\u2019re never sure you\u2019ve managed to gather them all.\u00a0 In fact, you can almost guarantee that in a few weeks\u2019 time, when you are in a rush to go out to dinner, you\u2019ll discover bits of tissue you missed on the shirt or blouse that you have carefully selected for your special evening.<\/li>\n<li>Sometimes, the tissue isn\u2019t so much shredded as utterly disintegrated so that there is a fine covering of paper fibres over every inch of clothing in the wash.\u00a0 This is the most irritating.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing you can do about this except wash the whole lot again, or use one of those sticky lint rollers to clean the \u201cclean\u201d washing.\u00a0 This latter course of action takes ages, and is never 100% effective.\u00a0 (I am told that, for the right pieces of clothing, a tumble in the dryer will remove the fluff, but this obviously doesn\u2019t help for the items of clothing that will shrink under heat.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Perhaps the worst thing about the situation is that you\u2019ve told your children\/husband\/wife to check their pockets before throwing their clothes in the wash.\u00a0 A thousand times.\u00a0 But they just forget.\u00a0 It\u2019s as if such a menial task is beneath them, and that you don\u2019t deserve them to do it for you.\u00a0 They will protest it\u2019s nothing personal, of course, just \u201cforgetfulness\u201d, but in the final analysis, each new occurrence is simply evidence of how they view their ease as more precious than yours (they would rather lazily throw their contaminated clothing in the wash than take five seconds to empty the pockets and save you ten minutes).<\/p>\n<p>There are parallels here with how we treat our sin.\u00a0 Like a dirty tissue in a pocket, tucked away and out of sight, sometimes we are unaware of it.\u00a0 Occasionally we realise it\u2019s there and resolve to do something about it, but more often than not, we do nothing (after all, it will take effort on our part, and sometimes, however manky it is, we feel somehow reassured that it\u2019s there \u2013 just in case we wish to use it).\u00a0 God, of course, calls us to deal with it \u2013 to acknowledge it, bring it out into the open and give it to Jesus.\u00a0 If we don\u2019t do this, then like a tissue through the washing machine, we can be sure that our sin will begin to affect our neighbours and friends and the quality of our relationships with them.\u00a0 And the longer we leave it, and however much we claim \u201cI forgot\u201d or \u201cI\u2019ll do it later\u201d, the more he is right to accuse us of selfishness \u2013 of not loving our neighbour as ourselves \u2013 and we can be sure to receive from him what we deserve.\u00a0 If, on the other hand, we do as he says and give our sin to Jesus, we have his promise of complete forgiveness.\u00a0 So why wait?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m sure that most, if not all of you will know the frustration of pulling a load of washing out of the machine only to discover that it\u2019s covered in bits of tissue from someone\u2019s pocket.\u00a0 The disaster comes in differing degrees, of course: Sometimes the offending tissue remains pretty much contained within the pocket, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,18],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-life","category-gospel","tag-jesus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}