I call this thought,
Last night's dirty dishes.
Have you ever gone to bed without washing the dishes?
Maybe you ate while you were watching TV and fell asleep.
Maybe it was a bigger job than usual and being tired you decided to just get to it in the morning.
Then morning comes and you walk into the kitchen and see the mess.
There's that nanosecond when you just hate what you see.
After you get over the feeling,
You get started on the cleanup.
So what's the big deal?
The kitchen cleanup cops aren't going to come with a warrant for your arrest.
Let's take a closer look at the dirty dishes.
The whole visual is unpleasant.
The food is dried on the plates and the utensils.
The pots and pans are yucky.
The glasses have that ugly residue.
The whole scene is going to take more time and effort to clean up than it would have if you'd done it the night before.
What would have worked with dishwashing liquid and a sponge if you hand wash or a quick rinse and popped into the dishwasher?
Now take stronger detergent and a scrubber sponge.
If you continue to ignore them and even add to them,
Eventually the kitchen will stink and the smell of your garbage will fill the air letting others know you have a bad habit and haven't cleaned up your mess.
That's exactly like mistakes and poor judgment in our lives.
And we all have them from time to time.
Clean up the mess as soon as possible.
Don't let it go too long.
The longer it sits,
The more difficult it will be to clean it up.
The bigger the mess looks,
The more inclined we are to try to figure out how to pass over it and not clean it up at all.
Like last night's dirty dishes that don't go away and don't wash themselves,
So is the ignored messiness in our life.
Bad credit,
Unfinished business,
Broken promises,
You know,
All that kind of stuff.
The longer you wait to clean stuff up,
The more difficult it is to do it.
Straight talk would sound like this.
You made the mess,
You clean it up.
As harsh as that sounds,
It's the truth.
No one can do it for you.
The truth is you wouldn't want anyone to clean up the mess in your life any more than you'd want someone to clean up your dirty dishes if for no other reason than that you wouldn't want anyone to see the mess you made or know your bad habit.
The greater motivation for washing your dishes on the spot is that if you don't,
You have to take time away from what you have planned for the new day and clean up from yesterday.
You can't get started with the new meal and the new day until you clean up the old.
Some have tried it,
But it doesn't work.
Eckhart Tolle writes about being in the present moment and experiencing the power and peace of the present moment.
The present moment,
For example,
In this scenario that I've created is the start of a new day.
The Bible talks about leaving the past behind.
That's regrets.
And not to live in the future.
That's worrying and anxiety.
Now is all there is.
Being in the present moment allows us to appreciate something as simple as breathing and all of the phenomenal systems operating in the human body and with gratitude acknowledge the good there is right here and right now.
Sometimes beloved,
There are experiences and ideologies that have shaped our belief system,
Blocking the consciousness of the flow of blessedness.
Let's call them the spiritual dirty dishes.
Forgetting the spiritual dirty dishes is noticing the presence of that which is affecting the present moment and the impression it's made on our mindset and that impacts going forward.
The Bible says,
Forgetting those things which are behind and push forward.
Practically speaking,
We need to look back just to identify the dirty dishes to see what the problem is.
Don't stay too long.
Just long enough to know what you need to forget.
Everybody's got a little messiness to clean up from time to time.
No big deal.
Just be aware that as you enjoy the sumptuousness of each day's living,
At the end of the day,
Make sure you wash your spiritual dishes.
I'm Carol and this was my thought.
At first light.
