I was with a bunch of other Elkhart citizens today. We were all together in a building, battling a foe that will never be completely won in this life but must be fought.
We were a pretty good representative Elkhart pool: a bus load of Hispanic agricultural workers, a fat, happy white couple with bad clothes and hair, several tiny black children with cute clothes, a few organized white people with nice clothes, a black lady with a pretty African-style dress, and one Mennonite. We were united by our desire to reduce the chaos in our lives.
At the laundromat, of course.
I got inspired this morning to wash two quilts, two down comforters, three sets of sheets, and a load of towels, all part of a fog which has been building for some time. I happily concluded that no one else in Elkhart would be dumb enough to do laundry on the Fourth of July. I pictured myself folding clothes in an empty room as in my night shift days.
Wrong. Apparently, doing laundry on the Fourth is human instinct. I pulled into a parking lot full of cars, and walked into a laundromat full of people.
I sat on my plastic bucket chair. I smelled the detergent, I watched the suds sloshing over the quilt that my aunts made me with my mom’s dresses after she died.
I listened to the whirr of the machines and the clatter of quarters falling out of the money changer and into the washers and dryers. I watched people searching for available machines, hauling bulging laundry bags, trying to stay out of each other’s way.
How like the church of Christ this is! I thought, oddly. All of us are here because of dirt. All of us are here because we don’t have the resources to cleanse things adequately ourselves. We bump into each other, but at our core, we all just need a good wash. How good to know there is a laundromat of the soul where we can be washed by the water of the Word of God! How good to know that he can present us without spot or wrinkle!
Happy Fourth of July, fellow seekers of the kingdom of God in search of cleansing!