How to Prevent Stubborn Stains

This morning, I totally forgot my fried fish with high flame and the result was a smoke-filled kitchen. There was an unpleasant stench all around the house. The poor fish was charcoaled burned on one side and the stainless steel frying pan was unable to live up to its being stainless since the scorched fish parts and burnt oil are now stubbornly stuck into the surface. The cold winter and lacking running warm water from the faucet made the task to clean the pan tricky and painstakingly slow.

Boil water. Add dishwashing soap. Scrub hard.
I needed at least 3 cycles of the mentioned steps before seeing the stainless surface again.
And just for good measure, I scrubbed hard again after cooking another breakfast dish for myself.

I’m glad I was able to get it back to its old shiny pan.

Let us realize that we are like dirtied frying pans every time we sin. Our clean and “stainless” image starts to get tainted which if left unchecked will become stubborn stains that are difficult to scrub off. The foul-stench of our sinfulness lingers unless we allow ourselves to be cleaned at the soonest time possible. And the worst unthinkable is that we begin to get use to being dirty and eventually hide away from any form of cleaning and seek acceptance from others with the same dirt and filth. We slowly lose our very own image.

So what should we do at the first instance of dirt in our lives?
The answer is – let ourselves be cleaned immediately to avoid it from becoming a stain.

Seek reconciliation with God through holy confession.
Do not hesitate.
Do not delay.
Do not doubt.

It is God’s wish to clean us, to make us shiny as He envisioned us to be at all times. God will rejoice with heaven every time we are made clean because God wants us to keep representing His unblemished, untarnished and holy image.

God bless.