If you had a dollar for every time you were encouraged to wash your hands in the past year, you would be a wealthy.

It is standard to hear these words whenever we hear about mitigations for COVID 19.

Wash your hands, with soap for 20 seconds. Wash your hands with soap and say the ABC’s. Wash your hands with soap and sing “Happy Birthday” or sing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

Washing our hands has become second nature. I don’t know the numbers but I’m sure the emphasis on washing our hands over the past year has brought the number of colds and other germ related maladies down from previous years.

Washing our hands in Scripture, was an admonition to watch our behavior. When the Holy Spirit breathed these words to James, in James 4:8, God knew that we needed to take extra measures to ensure our spiritual health so that our subsequent behavior would not be contrary to what was best for us. It’s no different than believing the habit of washing our hands is a good practice to maintain our physical health.

As a child I remember being told to go wash my hands. I was also told to make sure I used soap. This was often before a meal or after I had been outside playing in the dirt and who knows what else.

It was just a good practice even though I balked at having to do it. From time to time, the admonition to use “warm water” was tossed in for good measure. No one will know what diseases we were kept from because we begrudgingly washed our hands in warm water, with soap.

The same will hold true as we make sure we have clean hands to draw near to God. It just makes sense.

Okay, turn the warm water on, get the soap and sing with me…. “Twinkle, twinkle little star……how I wonder what you are.”

With clean hands!

Always in Pursuit!

Don