{"id":5148,"date":"2026-01-09T08:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T13:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5148"},"modified":"2026-01-09T08:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T13:59:09","slug":"cotton-tales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/09\/cotton-tales\/","title":{"rendered":"Cotton Tales"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,<\/em>\u00a0click here<\/a>
\u00a0
\u00a0In 1914, when the Bayer company began to package\u00a0its aspirin tablets in\u00a0bottles, they faced a challenge.

The tablets were fragile. They crumbled easily, especially when they rattled against each other during transit.\u00a0

What Bayer needed was a decent shock absorber and volume filler.\u00a0What they came up with was a big wad of cotton.\u00a0

By the 1980s, Bayer had begun to coat the majority of its aspirin tablets.\u00a0Disintegration was no longer an issue.\u00a0But Bayer hesitated to remove the cotton wads from their bottles. The reason was simple:\u00a0The public was alarmed by the very idea.\u00a0

That big wad of cotton had come to represent freshness and security, even though it had never served either of those purposes.\u00a0When customers opened a bottle of Bayer aspirin and didn’t find the cotton, they wondered if their pills were still potent.\u00a0Far worse, they wondered if someone had tampered with the bottle.\u00a0\u00a0

So, Bayer kept the status quo.\u00a0The company\u00a0and its customers could truly say, “We’re doing things this way because this is the way we\u2019ve always done it<\/em>.”\u00a0\u00a0

After all, there really\u00a0wasn’t any harm in leaving a wad of cotton in a pill bottle.

But there was.

Aside from the minor annoyance of picking little white\u00a0fibers out of one’s prescriptions, cotton, far from repelling moisture, actually attracts\u00a0it.\u00a0The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has\u00a0declared\u00a0that the freshness and security of pills is\u00a0enhanced if the cotton is removed.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

Bayer finally relented.\u00a0Since 1999, their bottles of coated aspirin tablets have been Cotton-Free Zones.\u00a0

Once a practice becomes a tradition, it’s hard to let it go.

That\u2019s a challenge that Jesus faced over the course of his ministry, especially whenever he encountered religious authorities who regarded \u201ckeeping the rules\u201d as a matter of life and death. One such encounter is reported in Matthew 15:1-6:
\u00a0
Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said,\u00a0\u201cWhy do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.\u201d\u00a0He answered them, \u201cAnd why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?\u00a0For God said,\u00a0\u2018Honor your father and your mother,\u2019 and, \u2018Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.\u2019\u00a0But you say that whoever tells father or mother, \u2018Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God,\u2019\u00a0then that person need not honor the father. So, for the sake of your tradition, you nullify the word of God.\u00a0<\/em>
\u00a0
Hand-washing prior to meals had become hugely significant for faithful Jews during the time of Jesus.
\u00a0
Pouring water over the fingers and wrists wasn\u2019t merely a matter of hygiene. Spiritual cleanness<\/em> had become a critical component in pleasing God.
\u00a0
The Pharisees and scribes who had come all the way from Jerusalem to Galilee just to keep their eyes on Jesus were obsessed with ceremonial cleanness. According to Old Testament law, a wide variety of things, both living and dead, were considered ritually unclean.
\u00a0
When it came to insects, for instance, only locusts (Middle Eastern grasshoppers) were given a ceremonial green light. They could be touched and eaten. All other insects, spiritually speaking, were from the dark side. If you were just about to serve a bowl of stew and a ladybug landed on the rim, the bowl was deemed unclean. So was the stew inside the bowl. And anyone who ate a bite of the stew. And anyone who later rubbed shoulders with the person who had eaten the stew.
\u00a0
Spiritual uncleanness, to put it mildly, was considered more contagious that this winter\u2019s outbreak of flu.
\u00a0
Rabbis insisted that washing \u2013 again and again and again \u2013 was the only way to counteract ritual uncleanness and to stay within God\u2019s favor. After all, you never knew when and where and how you might have become ritually unclean. According to tradition, Pharisees washed not only before every meal, but before every course <\/em>of every meal. \u00a0\u00a0
\u00a0
This is why the religious authorities \u2013 the ones who made sure they did things the Right Way \u2013 were all over Jesus. Why did he and his disciples neglect such a crucial tradition?
\u00a0
Jesus ignored their question. He responded with a question of his own. \u201cWhere did you ever get the idea that your traditions are more important than God\u2019s commandments?\u201d
\u00a0
Honoring father and mother, of course, is one of the ten commandments. But rabbis, over the centuries, had a found a way to do an end run around such verses. If your father or mother were impoverished and came to you begging for bread, you could say, \u201cOh, I\u2019m sorry, but I\u2019ve already dedicated everything I own to God, and I can\u2019t break my promise to God, now, can I?\u201d
\u00a0
Certain individuals had apparently been arrogantly clinging to their perspectives on promise-keeping as a way to negate the Bible\u2019s clear-as-day instruction to care for parents. And Jesus was having none of it.
\u00a0
According to Jesus, religious rule-keeping is a pathetic runner-up to the only things that really matter: loving God and loving others \u2013 all the time and in every circumstance. \u00a0
\u00a0
For many people, in Jesus\u2019 day and our own, that way of seeing things feels shockingly new.

But we\u2019ve always done it this way.<\/em>
\u00a0
We\u2019ve always read from that Bible version. We\u2019ve always said \u201ctrespasses\u201d instead of \u201csins\u201d in the Lord\u2019s Prayer. We\u2019ve always served chicken and noodles at our Lenten dinners.

True enough.\u00a0

But if we take the cotton out of our ears, we can hear Jesus assuring us that his way of embracing new things can both change our lives and change the world. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here\u00a0\u00a0In 1914, when the Bayer company began to package\u00a0its aspirin tablets in\u00a0bottles, they faced a challenge. The tablets were fragile. They crumbled easily, especially when they rattled against each other during transit.\u00a0 What Bayer needed was a decent shock absorber and volume filler.\u00a0What they came up with was a big wad of… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5149,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1054,1013],"class_list":["post-5148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-new","tag-tradition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5150,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5148\/revisions\/5150"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}