USGN September 2003 article
TERRY& BARBI FRANKLIN
Written by Terry Franklin

Grocery Store Bathrooms

Have you ever noticed how grocery stores crow about how fresh their produce is?  They will also be quick to show you gleaming stainless steel counters where meat is processed and packaged.

Have you ever used a bathroom in these same stores?  If your experience is anything like mine you’ll find conditions that would rival the worst backwoods truck stop –the kind that are still painted 1960’s royal blue, use roller cloth, pull-down hand towels, and dole out gritty Boraxo soap from a greasy dispenser. 

These bathrooms are awful, and the only comfort is an “Employees Must Wash Hands” sign above the sink.  However, who would even want to touch that sink?

These stores are sending two very different messages.  One is: “We’re fresh, we’re clean, and you can trust us to provide the best for your family.” The other is this: “Behind the veneer of ‘freshness’ this place is a dump – better flush with my shoe.”

Jesus said in Mark 7:20, “…What comes out of a man is what makes him unclean.” It is the evil inside, the evil thoughts, greed, envy, and so on that make us smell, spiritually speaking, like a port-o-john.

This is hypocrisy.  It is exactly what the apostle meant in Acts 23:3 when he referred to the high priest of the Sanhedrin as a “whitewashed wall.”  In ancient times, a wall was designated and used as a latrine.  Every so often, the wall was painted over with a white, paint-like substance – with no effort made to clean the wall in advance. Paul was very descriptive wasn’t he? He made clear that the outer appearance was not the real man – it was the filthy wickedness underneath.

Friends, it is time for us to look deep down inside of ourselves.  Are we hiding something from others?  Even if we are – we are not hiding anything from the Lord.  It is time for us to not only clean up the outside…but do some inside work as well.

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