“Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me”.  Psalm 51:10

This past Sunday in the youth Sunday school class, we looked at Psalm 51.  This has always been one of my favorite passages of Scripture.  We talked about the background of the passage, who David was, his achievements and failures and his repentant heart.  We walked through the life of David that led up to Psalm 51 and continued the story by reading the Psalm in class.  When we got to this particular verse, I had a bowl of water on the table.  We then talked about sin.  As the class named off different sins, I dropped food coloring in the water.  The once pure water was quickly turning an ugly shade of brown.  We talked about how sin does that to our heart.  It “dirties” us up.   I then brought out the Scripture that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.  When we have sin in our hearts, the things we say, our actions and attitudes are affected by that.  It then hit me that God was speaking to me, for you see, my actions and attitudes the week before were anything but pleasant.  I was frustrated, annoyed, impatient with my children and the list goes on!  And let me tell you I cried over it!  I said Why God?!  What is going on that I am so cranky and irritable?!  The dirtiness on the inside was coming out in impatience and unkind words. I realized in that moment in that Sunday School class that God was telling me I needed a clean heart.  That was my problem last week. Just like King David, we must all cry out to God for a cleansing of our hearts.  That we might be clean and pure before him.  For it is out of a pure heart that we can love and give ourselves to others.  As the illustration continued in class, we poured bleach into the murky water and watched a transformation take place.  The once dingy (and disgusting) water was becoming pure and clean right before our eyes (I ran out of bleach. . . oops. . . so we ended up with some beautiful blue clear water, like you’d find at the beach ;-)  As I told the class, when we are truly repentant of our sins, God (and God alone!) can come in and cleanse our hearts of the sin and make us pure.  That is my prayer today and my prayer for you as well.  And you’d better believe the next time I get a little short with my children, I will pause in my place and take a deeper look. ;-)