“Have you commanded the morning, and made the dawn know its place, that it may take hold of the bedskirts of the earth, so the wicked are shaken out of it?” Job 38:12-13.
What an obscure analogy! God the Master commands God’s housekeeper Dawn to shake the wicked like bedbugs out of the sheets. In context, God is talking about the control of chaos (“Who shut up the sea with doors when it came bursting forth?”). The barring of the sea sounds like a grand victory in the cosmos, but then comes this remarkably routine analogy of… housekeeping.
Every morning, Dawn comes in to shake out the covers and send the bedbugs scattering. There is no exterminator, no diatomaceous earth to sprinkle on the baseboards, and so the bedbugs are there to stay. They can’t be done away with entirely; they can only be managed. The chaos can only be controlled with a daily effort.
Shaking out the wicked becomes as routine as washing the dishes, sweeping the floors. Doing it once doesn’t solve the problem; it’s housekeeping, those mundane and routine activities that we have to do every day. You might ask, What’s the point? Why make the bed when it just gets messy again? Why sweep the floor when more dirt will be tracked in? The answer, of course, is obvious – we can’t eliminate the chaos, but we can control the chaos.
What an appropriate analogy in the ever-present struggle for human rights. We take care of one issue, only for another to crop up, like a cruel game of whack-a-mole. Slavery is abolished, and here comes Jim Crow. Once Jim Crow is gone, the prison industrial complex takes over. A dictator is overthrown, and another arises in their place. Wickedness is always among us in its various, insidious forms, and it’s so easy to feel overwhelmed every morning when you wake up and the bedbugs are back.
But chaos and wickedness can’t just be done away with in one fell swoop. Cosmic housekeeping is patience and perseverance. It’s waking up every morning and showing up to write, to vote, to preach, to march, to love. It’s putting on your apron and going to turn on the lights, dust the dark corners, shake out the sheets. It’s looking to your fellow housekeepers with an encouraging smile and knowing that the powers are not ultimate after all; they are only bedbugs. And they will be back tomorrow, but even if just for today, we can shake them out.
Lauren Calvin Cooke 