them. When I was a kid, there were few things I enjoyed more than sinking my bare feet into a fresh puddle. The best ones could be found at the end of our driveway, delightfully pooled in a deep rut at the end of a rainy day. First chance I got, I shucked my shoes, peeled off my socks, and stomped until the mud oozed between my toes and left my feet as wrinkled as raisins.
A quarter of a lifetime later, I've still got a thing for mud puddles. Just today, feeding horses in the rain left my muck boots, well, mucky. It was as though I'd walked in cement, only this cement was a mixture of horse manure, soggy hay, and who knows what else. I sure didn't want to track that junk in the house, and I was (to be honest) much too lazy to drag out the water hose, so I did the next best thing. I found a mud puddle and sloshed right through it.
But the thing about mud puddles is that they're muddy. Try as I might, I just couldn't quite get those boots clean. As soon as a little would wash off, my boot would sink to the bottom of the puddle, only to be encapsulated once again in filth.
I've heard that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. Call me crazy, but throughout my life I've tried numerous times to get my act together, to straighten up, to turn over a new leaf. Funny how that never seemed to work out. In fact, the more I tried to do good on my own, the more of a mess I ended up in. It wasn't until I encountered the living God and allowed Him to completely, eternally wash my sins away that I truly experienced cleansing. You see, filth plus filth always equals filth. But, praise God, repentance plus Jesus equals radical transformation and a new life in Him. Every single time. Consider these boots washed.
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