Why We Should Shower Regularly

We had a discussion in my 16 yr old Sunday School class that I felt was worth remembering. It was not something that I had planned on discussing, it just sort of "came up" and I wanted to remember it. I thought it might be worthy of blogging about.

We were talking about why we should go to church on a regular basis and partake of the sacrament and renew our baptismal covenants.

It is no secret that we believe that when we are baptized, we are washed clean of our sins up to that point and we are forgiven and have the opportunity to start over. When we come to church on Sunday, we have the opportunity to partake of the sacrament as part of the repentance process and therefore, it is like being baptized all over again, every time we worthily partake of the sacrament. We do this knowing that we are not perfect and therefore, will likely sin again. Partaking of the sacrament may wash away our previous sins, but it doesn't magically make our shortcomings disappear so that we never sin again.

The discussion that we had was actually about bathing. We bathe on a regular basis, even though we know that we will get dirty again and need another bath. We talked about how we feel when we are camping or something and aren't able to really be clean. The consequences of that uncleanliness cause us to smell bad and that causes us to be ashamed of our appearance. It causes us to not want to go out in public because of what other people might think about us because of our lack of hygiene.  If we go long enough without bathing, the bacteria and filth can cause us to have physical irritations and sores that are unhealthy and can need attention from a Dr to get medicine to heal them.
We also talked about how good it feels to take a nice shower and be clean again after a camping trip.

We compared the feelings of being unclean from not bathing on a regular basis to the feelings we might have if we go very many weeks without partaking of the sacrament. The longer we go without either the sacrament or a shower, the more unclean we feel, the more ashamed we feel about the things that are making us unclean and the more desperately we need to do something to remedy that uncleanliness. It is so much better to not let ourselves get to such a state of uncleanliness by doing what we need to do to maintain good hygiene (physically and spiritually) on a regular basis.

Just like having bad hygiene can cause us to need to seek help to heal our wounds, not partaking of the sacrament can lead to a state of unhealthiness that can also cause us to need to seek additional help to heal those wounds.

I am so thankful for the chance that I have to teach these kids and for the things that they teach me in return. I have gained some amazing insights this year!