By David Wilkinson
The window washers left our house at sunset last night with about 90 percent of the job done. Seems the rest is up to us: we can live with being mostly clean or we can finish the job.
Not that we have any complaints. Caleb and Jamie worked hard and seemed to be good at what they do. Our house looks like a different place.
I had nearly choked when Melanie showed me the estimate for cleaning the 28 windows on the 62-year-old house on Maple Avenue that we have called home for the past three years. But she guessed — and Caleb and Jamie readily affirmed — that our windows had not been thoroughly cleaned both inside and out for at least 10 years. Doing the job right would require considerable time and effort.
Central Texas is home to wind, rain, dust, dirt, more wind and Steatoda triangulosa (cobweb spiders). That’s not exactly a winning combination for sparkling clean windows. Doing the job right meant taking 23 window screens off and cleaning them separately. It meant cleaning all the sills and window casings. It meant taking down and cleaning five heavy picture windows. And it meant removing 23 storm windows, carefully separating and cleaning the panes, and then putting them back together and reinstalling them into the window frames. It was an all-day job.
After stepping into my office at the back of our detached garage to announce that the contracted work was complete (and to give me a copy of the invoice), Caleb mentioned that we might want to consider getting the rest of the job done. “The windows definitely look a lot better,” he said, “but you’ll be surprised what a difference it makes if you go ahead and clean each of them from the inside as well.”
I thought about that later.
During the season of Advent, we devote a lot of energy to spiffing up for Christmas. We dress up, shine up, clean up and decorate up. It all looks pretty good from the outside.
But, like the windows of our house, maybe we haven’t fully prepared the windows of our soul for the Light that comes into the world until we have done some inside cleaning as well.
John the Baptist, like many of the prophets before him and the Anointed One who followed him, had no qualms about reminding us that getting cleaned up on the inside is a necessary part of welcoming the Guest of Christmas. They called it repentance.
Sometimes repentance is about subjecting your heart, soul and mind to some long overdue deferred maintenance. The good news is that the One who truly sees the work that needs to be done grabs a step ladder, a rag and a bucket of soapy water and steps up to work alongside you.
Even better news is that your Co-worker sees what you hadn’t even noticed, gets to the corners you can’t quite reach, comes along behind you to wipe clean what you had missed and, yes, does the job that you could never have achieved alone.
Seems to me that’s a big part of what Advent is about.
I could go on with this spiritual metaphor. But I’ve got to go vacuum the carpet.