For the past couple of weeks, after our plumbing disaster, we have had our house cleaned from top to bottom.  My husband and I lived in a hotel for ten nights until the air quality in our home was deemed safe enough for us to return.  Great to be back in our home but there is still much cleaning going on around me.  Five very loud “air scrubbers” are still filtering out the soot particulates, and the cleaning team will continue to be on site for as long as it takes wiping down flat surfaces where soot continues to land despite all their best efforts.  Still, the team assures me, they will win the battle and I am so grateful for their hard work.  Really, my house has never been this clean!

The supervisor of the cleaning team met with us the other day and wrote down areas he wanted his workers to concentrate on this week and next.  As we chatted with him, he commented on how the team has grown to know and “love” our home and us through this cleaning process.  I was taken aback by the comment and he explained, “They have learned much about you by the pictures, items and such you have around your house.  They know what you value and place importance on and that’s why they have taken such time and attention to clean and care for this home.”

Wow!

I never realized how our personal décor items would have an impact on someone else until I realized he was especially commenting on the pictures of our family we display prominently, the cross stitched pictures that I sewed so many years ago that have scripture embroidered on them; a book case filled with study Bibles and books written by Christian authors.  The team has taken special note of all the ways we honour the Lord in our home and how we showcase our tight-knit family in the portraits that hang on the wall.

As we chatted with the supervisor, the Lord steered the conversation so we were able to share a little about our home church, and we quickly realized we were just watering the seeds that had already been planted by what they had already discovered about us by just cleaning our home!

Today, I have been chatting briefly with the three gals who are busily scrubbing down furniture and floors in what has become their bound and determined pursuit of ridding my home of soot.  They are some of the most pleasant, cheery gals I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know.  Can’t say I’ve ever been this enthusiastic when I have had to clean my house on my own, but seeing them hard at work, doing a task that I have never really enjoyed but knowing that they care about my home as much as I do, gives me peace that all is in good hands!

When it is all said and done, our home, whether we purposed it or not, was another way to provide personal testimony and bring Glory to God.

Who knew??

“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.  In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.  And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”  Ephesians 2:19-22