Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: PURE (09/06/24)
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TITLE: What Floats Your Soap? | Previous Challenge Entry
By LINDA GERMAIN
09/12/24 -
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I remember learning only three things in that boring class which was scheduled right after gym. The teacher was a tall, grayish-looking, older man who spoke in a deep, robotic, monotone voice. Staying awake took every ounce of discipline a room full of fourteen-year-olds could muster.
First, he insisted that fanning ourselves with notebook paper would not make us cooler, even if it felt nice after participating in the jumping jacks and other non-productive kinds of exercise prevalent back then.
Every day he would declare to the girls across the front row, “You’re just moving air around. It won’t help.” But it did help. That made me wonder if he was all mixed up about the importance of fans.
The second strange thing he said to the class was a bit puzzling. It concerned laundry detergent.
“There’s only a small amount of washing powder in the box and the rest is just filler.”
How many times has that crossed my mind during the thousands of loads I have done over the decades? Of course, I have no idea what we were supposed to learn from that statement. I shared it at home but no one seemed too impressed.
And finally, he seemed especially obsessed with his third favorite pronouncement about a popular advertisement for a simple little bar of soap that is still sold. He even wrote numbers on the board trying to support his confusing argument.
While pointing at the offending fraction as if we were the ones who wrote the frustrating copy for television, he would ask, “Really? 99 and 44/100 % pure?”
“Harrumph!” he would mumble with a touch of venom for such blatant false reasoning. “Pure WHAT?”
I don’t remember him ever enlightening us on those wayward contents that lacked such a teensy fraction of being 100%. He must have been trying to make a point about chemicals, the periodic table elements, or some sort of important nugget of wisdom that never landed on me--that is until recently.
If something is pure, then it is unadulterated. Doesn’t one scintilla of a drop of something un-pure ruin the whole thing? Compromise the entire batch? That soap needed a mere 56/100 to hit 100.
If people were innocent-looking white bars of soap, could we slide into Heaven by claiming we were almost pure? No matter how much we claimed to have shared an erroneous precept based on a misunderstood adage of godliness and cleanliness, our ticket still would be void. How sad is that?
Maybe that’s why I often recall what seemed so silly to a young teenager at the time. In my final years on earth, I want others to understand how the almost pure premise has no strength or holiness. It might as well be a big fat zero.
We do not have to be Colonel Mustard wandering around in the library with a candlestick and no clue! The ONLY way to reach that 100% is through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. His blood washes us as white as snow and has nothing to do with soap.
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Isaiah 1:18 NKJV
“Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the LORD, “Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.
Revelation 1:5 NKJV
…and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood
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*Clue is a mystery board game devised in 1943 by British board game designer Anthony E. Pratt.
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And, I remember loving to play Clue years ago!