I’ve decided that doing dishes is a waste of time. They just grow back! Especially in my house with teenagers and their smaller siblings running rampant. They hide in dark corners and conspire about how to get yet ANOTHER cup when my back is turned. And it doesn’t help that the older ones have learned to cook. I come home from work to find that they’ve become creative gourmets without the aid of a full-time dishwasher. Granted, they are old enough that I can pull the “I’m the mom and YOU can do the dishes” card. But still, the reality exists that there are always dirty dishes around no matter how many times we wash them.

Life is like that. We do the same things over and over. We sleep, we wake, we eat, we read our Bibles, say our prayers, work, talk to friends, drive the same roads, cuddle with our kids, laugh, eat again, pay the bills, empty the pantry, go to the grocery store, come back home, lather, rinse, repeat…and it’s wonderful. Somehow, in the midst of the sameness, there’s always an adventure. There’s joy and comfort. We humans like consistency after all.

Our spiritual lives echo this pattern. We die to ourselves daily (1 Cor. 15:31). We read the same Bible over and over and never even begin to exhaust its bounty. We pray daily and it continues to refresh and revive us. We “repent and do the first works” (Rev. 2:5) um, more than once. The cool thing is that no matter how many times we blow it and dirty things up, there’s always a dishwasher. His grace is sufficient for me! (2 Cor. 12:9)

Okay, maybe doing dishes isn’t such a waste of time after all.