Mac [SI]N' Cheese

Picture this:

I rushed home during my seemingly 10 second lunch break and was cramming some molten-lava-hot mac n’ cheese in to my mouth when I looked down…

A noodle had declared its pathway into my mouth unsatisfactory to that high expectation it held as a microwavable, processed noodle and it had landed on my  blue v-neck t-shirt.

I mean, it was only ONE noodle.

How bad could the stain be?

I put the noodle in the trash and I wiped the cheese off and, in my 18 year old male desperation, washed it with a dab of water and tried to dry it with a blow dryer…

We have all been there right?

Right…?

Needless to say I was no oxy-clean poster-child and I was left with a somewhat barf-green stain (cheese being yellow and my shirt being a baby blue of some sorts).

I look down at my watch and it was time to bullet back to school for another couple of class periods. I had a choice: change shirts or just leave and hope I’m not late to my class.

In my vanity, I rushed to my closet, grabbed a matching shirt and flew out of the door.

Then the thought came upon me a day later: Why did I rush to change shirts? Why didn’t I just face the rest of my day with a little stain?

I didn’t want to be that kid with food on his shirt and look like the EasyMac monster.

Why are we uncomfortable with stains? Just because they look gross?

What does our view of food stains say about the way we handle the staining of our hearts in regard to our sin?

We don’t want to appear to the outside world as a gross careless eater, and an even worse,

A sinner.

As humans, we sin, fail, and drop the cheesy noodles on our shirts from time to time.

We panic a little and try and get the stain out ourselves. This, we must know, will never work and may even make things worse since

           

“Apart from me (God), you can do nothing”

                   John 15:5

Our outward image means nothing in Gods eyes.

He doesn’t care what hairstyle you have, how many pimples you have, if you can pull off those crazy thick hipster glasses, if you look like Gerard Butler in 300 or that shallow model that’s on the cover or your favorite Cosmo magazine, or if you have a nasty stain of sin on your heart because our heart is clothed with the most beautiful and powerful thing in the entire world:

“I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God.

          For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness…” Isaiah 61:10

So therefore delight in your God.

You don’t have to hide the stains of your heart.

Come to the Lord, like a child after a messy meal, and let him clean you by covering you with his righteousness.