The people on the cruise still talk about the time a vacationing surgeon ended up doing an emergency appendectomy on the ship’s steward on a table in the galley. The odd thing was he used the cutlery from the kitchen. Later, the doctor said, “A surgeon can use almost any kind of cutting implement to do surgery. However, it must be clean.”
It must be clean. By “clean,” the surgeon meant germ-free, purged from all kinds of impurities that may cause infection. If you’ve ever seen a doctor scrub up for surgery, you know what this means. After a long time of fiercely brushing the soap and water into his hands, he rinses and then encases those pristine hands in latex gloves. The poor bacteria don’t stand a chance!
There is a wonderful line from Psalm 24 that fits here. Someone asked, “Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place?” The answer came back: “He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not set his mind on what is false, and has not sworn deceitfully.”
I wonder sometimes if modern farm children know just what life was like in the old days, before mechanization and modernization took over. Take baling hay, for instance. Our baler was a long monster pulled behind the tractor. Once it was in place, you unhooked the tractor and turned it around, then connected the belt from the tractor to the baler. Now, using a pitchfork someone feeds hay into the baler from above. But you–being the kid and therefore inheriting the dirtiest jobs–crouch down below the action waiting for the time to “throw the block,” which separates the bales. Then you push strands of wire through the holes in that block, and retrieve them when the person on the other side pushes them back. Now, pull them tight and twist into a knot tight enough to hold the bale together. All the time you were doing this, the noisy baling action went on over your head while the dust and grit of falling hay filtered down all over you. In five minutes of work, you are layered with tiny bits of hay and the dust and grime from the field. You are filthier than you have ever been in your life.
Or did you ever clean out a hog pen? That is positively the worst. The stench, the muck, the sheer filthy is beyond description.
When you finish, all you want is a bath. You’ve never ever wanted to take a bath like you do today. A long, hot, deep bath. You want to be clean again. In fact you feel a lot like King David.
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