Though my desk is usually less than tidy, I don't neglect my keyboard. Several times a week I turn it upside down, gently pat its back (all those years of experience in burping babies yielded work-related skills), and then I brush the debris from my desk top. As an added precaution, every couple of weeks I reach for my can of compressed air and begin the work of probing for foreign objects under the keys.
It's interesting what flies out: the occasional crumb, a few bits of lint and far too much grey hair. I can justify the crumbs - after all it is dedication to my work that keeps me hard at it over the noon hour. As far as lint goes, everyone has some dust in their house. About the grey hair: it if hasn't already happened to you, it will.
A quick, online search revealed a number of tips and products dedicated to keeping electronic devices clean. As one blogger wrote, "my countertops are spotless but my electronics are filthy." Cleaning products and aids abound, the problem is that these expensive but needed electronic devices attract the dust from the environment and the grease from our fingers. A person has to persist in cleaning out the insides.
The need for heart-cleaning requires diligence on a daily basis. Often without our even being aware of it, we pick up habits, attitudes and vocabulary that sully who we should be and wish to be. It's frustratingly easy to attract the less-than-wholesome standards of behaviour, but so agonizingly difficult to detect and remove. I've found that time spent in the presence of God and his Word is the most powerful cleansing and stain-repellent agent around.
"Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." (Jesus Christ, as recorded in John 15:3)
