clean

I’ve often thought my annual read through the Bible sometimes matches the calendar. For example, the slog through Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy seems perfectly suited for January and February. It’s mostly grinding, working my way through it verse by verse, with the occasional warm ray of God’s providence shining through.

Today I had to hunt a little bit for the providence. Today I read about defiling skin diseases, and house mold, and bodily discharges. And I had to reflect a little bit to see God’s love for his people in this attention to the day-to-day afflictions that could make them miserable.

How do you explain germs and spores to people who haven’t invented the microscope. How do you communicate that skin diseases can be contagious, mold can cause sickness, that those body fluids are the best incubator for bacteria? You call them unclean and make being clean a necessary condition for social life.

Without good hygiene, camp life is deadly. In World War II, the elite unit known as Merrill’s Marauders was made combat-ineffective by diseases and diarrhea caused by the bad practices of Chinese units upstream.

It’s comforting to know that God, in his cosmic age-old fight to restore the souls of his people, cares enough about my day-to-day happiness that he also attended to the rashes and fungus that can make life a drag.

It reminds me that outreach is most effective when we attend to physical needs before spiritual ones.