Under the rug…

I’ve always heard the expression “sweeping it under the rug,” but never really thought about it until recently. My in-laws were in town a few months ago and we had taken them out to show them the area and do a little bit of shopping. When we arrived at home we had discovered that one of our two adorable yorkies had manage to have an accident on the carpet. I was upset, but knowing that we were gone for a good part of the day and they hadn’t been let out I was more upset at myself than at the dog. I grabbed the carpet cleaner and our mini-carpet cleaner vacuum thing and started cleaning the carpet. I turned the deep scrubber on and noticed that it somehow snagged a piece of our carpet and began to rip up that piece of carpet. When I finally turned the vacuum off, I finally saw the damage that was done. What remained was about a 6 inch single line of fabric that had been lifted from the carpet. My father-in-law gave me some advice on how to fix it and said that it was definitely something that could be fixed. I decided that since we were leaving the following day to go out of town that I would cover it with our “Welcome” mat and get to it when we returned. Despite the tragic event happening a couple of months ago, I still have yet to repair the carpet.

What got me thinking was how the rug has been covering the rip in the carpet for a couple of months now. Sometimes I’ve completely forgot about it because I can’t see it. It is almost like I think the rug is acting like a band-aid and if I leave it on there long enough then it will heal itself.

How many times do we do something similar in our lives? We have messed up or done something stupid and we decide to cover it with a rug. When what we really need to do is to pick up our rugs and fix what is underneath. It may take a little and maybe even a lot of work, but it is what we need.

God desires for us to stop pretending like we can just cover up our sin and to run to Him. He can fix whatever mistakes or issues that are beneath our rug.