A “through the bible” devotion from Leviticus 15.
“Supper’s ready!”
My brother, sister, and I all thundered down the stairs and took our assigned places at the dining room table.
“Did you wash your hands?”
My brother, sister, and I all scrambled for the bathrooms, one upstairs, one down, to wash our hands.
When we returned to the table, there were follow up questions.
“Did you use soap?” “Did you wash both sides of your hands?” Mom was no dummy. She knew we had much to learn about cleanliness.
So did God’s people in Leviticus 15. Here’s a whole chapter of instructions about washing and bathing that I take for granted. You can read all the details there. I have to remind myself that they didn’t have indoor plumbing with clean, running water. Even if I’m camping I usually have access to showers and a laundry room. Hygiene was different in the wilderness on the way from Egypt to Canaan.
When I traveled to Haiti to help with earthquake recovery in 2010, I saw the expansive tent city populated by hundreds of thousands of people outside of Port-au-Prince. There were no bathrooms or running water. Garbage was piled high. Sewage ran down the street. Clothes were washed in dirty streams. Survival meant there was little if any cleanliness, and a lot of disease.
A community like that can’t survive. Without the oversight of the priests, I doubt that Israel would have survived very long either. God’s no dummy. He knew his people had a lot to learn about cleanliness, too.
I learned a lot about cleanliness during the Covid pandemic. I washed my hands more that year than ever before. Both sides! I reached for hand sanitizer at every opportunity. I wiped down everything.
By the grace of God we survived!
Waite for it... 