Melamine sponge and the white hem of God's garment

The chairs for the new church were acquired from a discontinued funeral home. They are stackable, comfortable synthetic leather chairs, and we paid 7,000 yen (about 50 dollars) for fifty of them.

Our first sanctuary is in the middle of Yokohama's residential area, a house built on a flag-shaped plot. Its 20 tatami mats big living room will be our place of worship. To lessen the rent, a family with a baby has graciously agreed to live upstairs.

Till then, we rented a rental hall every Sunday to keep the service. It was carefree, yet hard because we didn't have space for children, and sometimes had to cut short the preaching for the next users.

That day, we gathered in the new church to do preparation. We ate store-bought lunch in a sunny little room and smiled at each other, feeling the goodness of the Lord.

My husband with carpenter skills was much needed everywhere, but I can't do those things, so I scrubbed the chairs we got from the funeral home. They were good chairs but were stained badly. Maybe they were kept outside. 

Dirt stuck to the tiny wrinkle of the synthetic leather seat and was hard to clean. Pastor handed us toothbrushes. Scrubbing with all my might after spraying cleaning stuff, I could barely clean it.

But those stains on the metal part didn't come off at all. If I scrubbed that part endlessly, it did a bit. But there were fifty chairs to clean. We decided to give up.

So for many hours, at the entrance of our new church, us, "Scrub club" scrubbed those chairs. And asked those going to the shop for supplies to get us a new brush, something bigger than a toothbrush, maybe a toilet brush will do.

Revolution came with the toilet brush. When I found inside the plastic shopping bag, a real toilet brush, I burst out laughing. It was crazy that we said we wanted to scrub chairs with such.

They also got us the melamine sponge. What we call in Japan, "Geki ochi kun". I took it to my peers scrubbing chairs at the entrance. Immersing the sponge with water and as soon as we started scrubbing……

 "Oh my goodness!! It's working!!"
 "My! It so effortlessly takes away all the stains!!"

The stains we struggled with a tiny toothbrush for many hours are disappearing before our eyes with a melamine sponge. For half an hour, we marbled at the melamine sponge and praised the melamine sponge, while scrubbing again those chairs we thought we already cleaned.

After so many hours of scrubbing, my hand had no more power nor no more strength to think straight in my head. But I remember speaking with excitement to Brother K from Nigeria, who was very curious about the revolutionary cleaning product.

"It's like what we've been doing with toothbrushes all these hours are just dung, and this melamine sponge is the righteousness of Christ!!!

That odd comment would be hard to understand without knowing Phillipians 3:8-9. It means however hard we tried to be right on our own, it is just dung in the sight of Christ. In a modern word, dung could be, poop.

The comment was very illogical but the thought was floating around me for weeks. I am just a dust, and my righteousness a dung. If I can be righteous, that would only be achieved by wearing the righteousness of Christ, abandoning all hopes of boasting myself.

I tended to cut myself in pieces in my heart, remembering things I've done, things I couldn't do, and embarrassing pasts, so the thought came to me like a beam of light, a hand to rescue me.

I have indeed said what shouldn't be said, hurt people and did embarrassing things, and might do in the future too. But cutting myself for them could be because of the foolish pride that I can perfect myself on my own.

Give it up, says the Lord. You can't take away the stains by scrubbing with a toothbrush. Take my sponge, do it my way. Unless you won't make it.

As hard as I try, I can never make myself perfect. Even if I try, the Bible says the effort itself is the dung. So I choose to surrender. Surrender and wear God given righteousness, the righteousness that can only be gotten by believing.

Gently, I lay me under the feet of Jesus. Please, do what you desire to do with me. I gave up struggling on my own. Please whisper your thought, your way into my ears.

Then, Jesus covers me with the hem of His garment. The white linen garment. The shining righteousness, that has never sinned. If I have anything to boast about myself, if I have any righteousness, it is Christ, who is covering me with the hem of His garment.

Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:

Philippians 3:8‭-‬9 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/php.3.8-9.KJV