I love my vacuum cleaner. I am not ashamed to say it. It is the best vacuum cleaner ever. I grew up being the vacuum cleaner kid. It was one of my chores. We had a Hoover. It had a bag. I never remember changing the bag. I would turn it on. The bag would inflate. I would push it around the house.
I never felt any satisfaction in the process. Occasionally, I would enjoy making the slight sweeping patterns in our green sag carpet, but mostly it just seemed pointless. Sometimes I got to dust. Armed with a white rag and a yellow toped can of furniture polish I would glide my had over the furniture like an ice skater in the winter Olympics. Then with a pop and flourish I would turn the old T-shirt over and start again. The dark black stain testifying to my mastery of the sport.
Cindy and I married and I still did lots of the vacuuming. I learned to change the bag. I still did not like the process. Eventually, our wedding gift vaccum fell silent. In the interim a new breed of vacuums appeared on the market. They did not have bags, but clear cylinders. The dirt appeared in the chamber. The operator could see immediate progress.
We invested the money. I loved my new vacuum cleaner. It turned the process of gathering hair and dirt into a game. I win every time I fill the canister and dump it into the trash. I love that I can see the bits of flotsam and that my efforts are so immediately rewarded.
Over the last few months, by vacuum has been failing. Increasingly, I have been down on my knees with a lint brush combing the carpet so that the vacuum can pick up the little piles I create. I thought that my dogs were just going through a phase and that the soft undercoat they seem to be shedding was just too fine for the vacuum to collect. I began to work for the vacuum instead of it working for me.
I got home from Ethiopia and Cindy had been doing my chores and she commented that the vacuum was broken. Something inside of me clicked. I had checked its sucking power on numerous occasions. That was not the problem. I looked at the brush bar. It spun with ease. The red brushes stuck out like they were supposed to. Then it suddenly hit me. They were too short. The years had worn them down to the point that they no longer agitate the carpet, they do not sweep at all. Amazon sent me a new bar and I replaced it. Its like having an old friend back. The rug looked brushed and clean and new. The canister had captured the dog hair. I was winning again.
Sometimes in life we need a new brush bar. For too long we have gotten used to the wind currents around us. The confronting, scouring power of the Word of God seems to no longer even touch us. Instead, its provocative words pass over us while we barley notice. It’s time to replace the brush bar. Pick up a new translation, read it slower, think through its implications, but whatever you do, don’t get so used to the Bible that its radical call to love the enemy, to forgive, and the call to holiness no longer even touches your soul.