Cleaning the Centrum Dirty

After my mission I worked for the Centrum at SUU, which was a large basketball arena. My job was to be a custodian for several classrooms around the arena. The hallway that ran around the Centrum had a vaulted ceiling at least 30 feet high. One day after a crowded concert we found a massive wad of paper towel that had been drenched in water and thrown on the wall. It was about 25 feet in the air and because it had dried it was stuck like glue.

After some debate on how to get it I attached several poles together with a scrubby at the end. It took a huge effort to get the poles up to the right spot. Finally we knocked the wad off the wall and scrubbed the extra pieces off. I was proud of the accomplishment until the boss said, "Aw crud! Look what we did to the wall!"

The walls of the Centrum were white, or at least I thought they were. Looking at the spot we had just cleaned it shone with a shiny bright white, and it made the rest of the wall look dingy. The boss sighed, "We just cleaned the whole rest of the building dirty."

Sometimes repentance is like that. Once you get one part of your life fixed up it makes you realize how many other pieces are dingy too. As I improve my scripture reading I find myself pondering how well I write in my journal, how often I visit the temple, how faithfully I follow the prophet's council to grow a garden. Because I have repented in one area all the walls of my spiritual Centrum start to look a bit gray.

Of course there was debate for how to do a quick fix on the Centrum wall. All sorts of ideas on how to smudge up that spot until it matched the rest of the wall, or maybe cleaning around the spot with only a half job, so the difference was harder to spot. The problem was we could never make that spot look the same, and as long as it was different it stood out. The boss said we needed to scrub all the walls and ceiling of the Centrum.

The Lamanite king known as the father of Lamoni once said, "O God ... wilt thou make thyself known unto me, and I will give away all my sins to know thee" (Alma 22:18). The king realized that to repent he would need to change every aspect of his life, not just scrub one little sin. I may try to fool myself by claiming I don't really need repentance, or maybe I can try a little harder in a few related areas, but the only way to truly be like Christ is to have a massive overhaul. In the scriptures this is called a "mighty change of heart" (Alma 5:14)

Think of it like a spot of sin. We've all got them, and sometimes they are discreet, other times they stick out like a giant wad of paper towels. It's going to take work to get that ugly stain cleansed, but there is no sin so terrible that we cannot reach our goal to repent.

That summer we acquired a drivable hoist with a platform that went up 25 feet in the air. We took turns, but for 8 hours a day five days a week for three months someone was up in that bucket scrubbing. It was hard work, and many times I wondered if it was really worth it. The sight of those gray walls would make my stomach queasy.

I like to ask "Is it hard to live the gospel?" I think the answer is "YES! At first... but then it gets easier after a while. After that, NO, it's not hard at all". There is a change... a mighty change of heart. At first the idea of reading scriptures every day, of watching every word that I say, of sharing the gospel with a friend makes my stomach queasy. But then as I practice I start to feel something else. I get excited.

Walking through the shiny white halls and seeing the line of gray showed me we were making progress. It was exciting to see how close we were to completion. Eventually we made it all the way back around to that tiny spot where the oversized spitwad was cleaned. Finally the spot could no longer be found on the sparkly white hall. The boss commented that the job probably

hadn't been done in decades, and it was good to have the place clean top to bottom. I have to

admit - it looked good, and I was proud of my work.


The Lord has promised us a beautiful end to the story, as glorious as the "glory of the sun" (1 Corinthians 15:41). It's hard to imagine standing before the Savior, but if we are clean in sparkling white we will say it has all been worth it. Keep that goal in mind when you find another fault that needs repentance. By cleaning the rest of the Centrum dirty we eventually ended up with a spotless building
.