Candle Wax and Crusty Attitudes

Breakfast dishes done. Husband kissed and waved off to work. Showered and make-up applied. The house settled into stillness.

My mind, however, was busy with thoughts, all in different directions. It was time to quiet my soul, so I walked into the living room, quilt wrapped around me to ward off the chill, and began to pray.

Kneeling down, I noticed something on the carpet. Running my finger over the slightly milky spots, I realized they were drips from a candle I moved to the dining room a few nights earlier. “That’ll be tough to get out,” I thought, and went back to prayer. I’d take care of it later.

Then the Lord spoke, “Pick out the wax from the carpet.” So I began picking out the melted wax from the now matted surface fibers. As I began to pick at the wax, I noticed another spot nearby, and then another, and another. There were a couple dozen in all. As I picked at the wax, it turned white.  It was reluctant to release its hold from the fibers. With equal stubbornness, I continued picking at the wax spots, one by one.

“What do you see,” the Lord asked, as I stood up to take what I’d collected in my hand to the kitchen trash. I saw that the spots were more apparent now with the waxy substance turned white against the sage green carpet. I hadn’t noticed the drips before, until my face was close to the floor, and now, it was noticeable from a distance.

I went back to working on the small ones first, then tackled the larger ones. The larger the spot, the more patience and persistence was required. I discovered that stubborn candle wax may require more extreme measures, such as using the heat of a hair dryer to melt the wax, then gently blotting the wax with a paper towel.

Then the Lord began to draw a parallel for me from this simple picture. Our crusty attitudes blend into the fiber of our make-up and are hardly perceptible from a distance. But then God, in His loving way, looks more closely at our hearts, shining the light of his love. The resistant flaws in our character become more apparent as he carefully exposes each one. And we’re amazed, “That’s in me?”

Tenderly, He separates the hardened areas, releasing and setting free our souls. Sometimes, it requires the heat of His Holy Spirit to dislodge the unwanted attitude from our character. His timing and His method are always perfect!

As the psalmist wrote, so our heart’s cry should be: “Create a new, clean heart within me. Fill me with pure thoughts and holy desires, ready to please you.” (See Psalm 51:10 TPT.)

Remove the particles from the fiber of my heart, particles that keep me from being clean and pure, particles that obscure my vision and keep me from seeing you. For truly, I want to see you and know you more.