The Saturday before Easter I decided the house just had to be cleaned. The kitchen floor was sticky, the carpet needed vacuumed and there was dust on every surface. Bob usually vacuums and I usually dust and mop, only for some reason we decided to switch that morning. He mopped floors and I vacuumed.
I was halfway through one room when I noticed that the vacuum kept spitting back a small piece of paper over and over. I decided to check what was wrong – the dust collector was empty, and the brushes had been moving just fine. The motor was running loudly like always. The carpet even looked like it had been hit with a vacuum. Still that one piece of paper kept reappearing.
Further investigation determined that the vacuum had lost its vacuum. It no longer sucked up the dirt, dust, or debris. It just ran over the carpet and redeposited all that back into the carpet. I wondered how long it had been that way. How often did Bob use it without noticing that it wasn’t actually cleaning anything? After all it made all the right noises, left all the right brush ridges in the carpet. It looked just fine, except … except it had lost its primary purpose. It’s a vacuum, it’s supposed to vacuum!
That made me wonder about our primary purpose. What is it? Have we lost sight of it? The OT is clear that we are to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” [Deuteronomy 6:5 HSCB]
Jesus added one other component. He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” [Mark 12:30 HCSB]
I often remind us of God’s love for us with its unconditional and “unstoppable” attributes (as Pastor Laura from The Way Middleton reminded us on Easter Sunday). It is important for our spiritual well-being to remember God’s love. It is also vitally important to remember our primary purpose – to love God with all, ALL, our heart, soul, strength, and mind. That is what we were created to do.
I will admit I sometimes lose sight of that with everything going on around me on a daily basis. And when I do, I may look just fine on the outside, but inside I’m like that broken vacuum that seems fine but is not doing what it was designed to do.
