home | contact
God, like water to soap, is the catalyst in our lives.

Message from Pastor Hiller

A Tiny Molecule of Soap

By Pastor Elizabeth L. Hiller

One of the less glamorous but more useful parts of life is soap. We use soap to wash dishes clean. We use soap to wash away germs that accumulate on our hands from touching doorknobs and light switches. We give thanks when there’s soap in a skuzzy gas station bathroom.

The pump kind, the foam kind, and the bar kind scented with lavender or Irish springtime are relatively new additions to the world of soap. Europeans have been making soap for at least 1200 years — combining tallow from goats and ash from beech trees. Whether we pump it, pour it, or lather ourselves with a bar of it, it works the same.

One side of a soap molecule loves water. That’s why when we put soap on our hands, it will wash away with a stream of water. The other side of the soap is afraid of the water. That part of the soap molecule will cling to any non-water bits of things floating in that same water. That’s the side of the soap that grabs onto dirt or grease or whatever it is that you’re hoping to wash away. The side that loves water will eventually pull the whole lot of the molecule, the side attached to dirt and all, down the drain with the love of its life, water.

This process is slick and simple. What a deal that one little tiny molecule of soap can both be drawn to water and flee from it. It seems like a very human process to me. There are certainly days when I seek God’s presence in my life, when I am drawn to a quality of life that gives God honor — in my work, through my interaction with the checkout girl at Hy-Vee, and with my family — I live with God quietly at the center of it all.

There are other days when part of me feels like it’s running in the opposite direction of our Savior. I am sluggish, surly, or I just can’t seem to get out of my own boo-hoo’s to even notice the checkout girl at Hy-Vee. Soap’s love/flee relationship with water is a kindred spirit with the human love/flee relationship with God. Martin Luther, the 16th-century church reformer, described this human like this: humans are simultaneously saints and sinners. People simultaneously love God AND wreak havoc in our lives and hearts through simple or complicated running away from God and the person God calls us to be.

If you have ever felt this tug, the tug to model your life on Christ, and the very same minute the tug to keep yourself powerfully at the center of your universe, you know the struggle. People throughout time have struggled with this. Peter, one of Jesus’ beloved disciples in the Bible, loved Jesus and gave up his normal way of doing things as a fisherman to follow Jesus. Yet when Jesus was most in need, and just moments after Peter vowed to follow Jesus until his death, Peter denied that he even knew Jesus, three times. Still later in the book of Acts, this same Peter spent his time and energy glorifying Jesus providing food and funds for early followers of Christ who were struck by a terrible famine. Peter was both saint and sinner, written down for all to see.

Try as we might, our whole selves are both saint and sinner. We are not simply one or the other. Yet we are not stuck in a life of continuous struggle. God, like water to soap, is the catalyst in our lives. God loves us dearly and washes our misdoings and sins down the drain when we confess to God. Now is the time, every day is the time, to ask God to wash our hurt, bitterness, and anger down the drain. In God’s forgiveness, we are gifted with cleanliness, purity, and the chance to give life another try.

Pastor Elizabeth Hiller,

  ::