I Was giving my kettle an extra cleaning; doing areas that usually are forgotten, when the thought came to me: Why am I bothering, nobody is coming to admire it.

Then my thinking changed to the fact that if I kept the kettle clean by giving it an extra shine now and again it would not need a real going-over when I might be expecting company. Also, if neglected, it would get so dirty that it would really either be hopeless or take a long time to get it back to its original shine.

Isn’t this the case with our lives in the Truth? We go astray a little and think: That was easy and no harm done. So we go astray a bit more. Finally our shine is no more and it is just about impossible to return to our former brightness.

Thanks be to our merciful God; He never gives up on us. So if we truly want to shine in our faith and receive His forgiveness, we, too, can polish up our lives to clean out the bad habits.

Oh yes! It will be like my kettle and need an extra hard cleaning, and then continuous cleaning as we go along in life. But, who knows when our sur­prise visitor will be the Lord Jesus Christ himself?