Inexplicably clean

Have you ever had one of those moments that take your breath away?  One second, you're pacing in the foyer with a squirrelly infant who's doing his best to distract you.  You feel the impatience rise in your gullet, and you know, intimately, how imperfect you really are.  Then a fellow member testifies,  It strikes a chord in your soul, and something changes.  You find yourself, in your mind, looking down at your hands.  They are wonderfully, inexplicably clean.

You didn't do anything to deserve that cleanliness.  You've tried, and failed, to be clean by yourself.  You've tried to be perfectly patient, loving, charitable, and honest.  You've tried to follow the commandments.  You'll continue trying.  And you'll continue failing.

And yet you're clean.  You've been made clean by Another, and that gives you a freedom that you never had before.

Remember, the Atonement isn't a check to cash at Judgement Day.  It's not an event, but a process.  If we want to use the Atonement, we can.  Right now. We can be wonderfully, inexplicably clean, if we but accept the conditions that the Atoner requires.

Those conditions don't require us to be perfect, but to rely on Him.  So have faith, and turn to Him now.  For if we don't turn to Him now, how will we turn to Him then?

He makes us clean, here and now.