This morning as I was putting the milk carton back in the refrigerator after pouring milk on my muesli, I discovered a bottle of cranberry juice on its side on the middle shelf had leaked. What I first thought was a sticky shelf turned out to be a real mess. Half the bottle had poured out down all over the shelves and into the drawers below. 

In the course of pulling out and washing everything and bailing red juice out of the bottom of the refrigerator, I dislodged a removable plastic piece on the back panel I had never noticed before. Behind that, I found a condensation drain full of ugly, slimy black mold. Who knows how long that has been infecting the food in our refrigerator with unhealthy mold spores?! I had to go looking for a stronger cleaning agent than water and dish soap!

This was certainly not the way I expected to spend the morning! 

But it occurred to me that God may sometimes brings things into our lives in order to help us learn things we might not have noticed before. And I don’t only mean things like moldy refrigerator drains. I mean things about ourselves, about our hearts. 

How many of us think of ourselves as patient, loving, caring, generous, (fill in the blank with the virtue of your choice) people, only to discover ugliness coming out of our mouths when somebody pushes or crosses us in some way? Maybe what we think is a fairly minor character flaw is actually pretty ugly. 

I have said before that I believe I am a very patient person. And it is true! I AM a patient person . . . until I actually need to be. It’s easy to be patient when I am asleep, for instance! But when I have to wait too long in the checkout line, or if the traffic on the Autobahn starts backing up, or when someone is critical of something I have said or done, then I realize it is not so easy. When I stop and look more carefully within, I discover that patience is probably not one of my virtues. There is work to be done. 

So, the “moral” I am offering from my “cranberry juice disaster” is that when something uncomfortable or trying comes up in the course of the day, you and I may need to look a bit more carefully below the surface of our initial reaction to the thing. Maybe there is a real problem in our own hearts that needs attention. Maybe something we don’t generally notice about ourselves needs more work than we think. With respect to any ugliness we discover hidden in our hearts, the cleansing agent we need is the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit, which is only activated through prayerful repentance.

The Lord be with you.