sin

Hope Available Here!

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DSCN0526DSCN0527I was inspired today to do a (little) spring cleaning, and our screened in back porch this time of year is always a sorry mess.  Pollen has literally invaded every inch of it, including the white (now yellow) cat!

We also have patio furniture out there underneath all that, and the table has an opaque glass top.  I can’t wait every year to tackle it when the visible pollen is finally through, because it is really sad when you can’t even see through the glass!  Before I cleaned it, however, I had a thought, and turned on the porch light to take a picture (picture on left).  You can barely see the light reflecting in it.  Then after washing it thoroughly, I took the same picture – and look at the results (picture on right)!  Amazing, isn’t it?

God used this to remind me, with Easter coming tomorrow, about what a difference He has made in my life.  We are all made in the image of God, and are designed to bring Him glory and honor.  And we are also created to reflect HIS image in our lives, and not our own!  You can see, however, that when sin (the dirt and pollen) collect and are not attended to, His light cannot hardly shine through us.  All the world can see (as in me looking at this table before) is dirt and ugly and annoyance that something designed to be beautiful, designed to reflect, is not doing it!

Put another way, if I had company and invited them to eat on the table on the right, I would be embarrassed and they would be totally turned off.  And who could blame them?  But I sometimes don’t have any trouble living in this world, or inviting others to my church, or sharing the gospel with the unsaved….and I SHOULD be embarrassed by the sinI have been harboring or the way I have been living…and they are always turned off!

So, as we celebrate Easter tomorrow, and the gift of salvation that Jesus made possible for us on the cross, lets also analyze which table top we represent – and ask God to make all things new by repenting and allow Him to wash us clean again!

Celebrating Fire Ants

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theme_01-nodate[1]This time of year in deep south Georgia, there is a festival of some sort every weekend.  Peaches, peacocks, peanuts – you name it, we’ve got a festival!  Because I am from the big city (Atlanta) the first spring we were here was a constant surprise of the things people will celebrate.  As you can see from the photo there is a great event, complete with a “fire ant queen” beauty pageant.

Fire ants are remarkable.  I didn’t truly appreciate them until we lived in this part of the country.  They are aggravating, mulitply more than rabbits, and can make a grown man weep when he encounters a mound of them unexpectedly.  They are sneaky because they begin their colonies underground, and once the hill appears, they can be MILES deep. We know from science that they are incredibly powerful and smart.  They can move things many, many times their weight, and their colonies rival the best architecture in the world.  And they are practically indestructible! We spent major $$ one spring spraying our yard with the “strongest” pesticide, and they were laughing at us two days later. I found this out too when we had minor flooding one year – I watched as entire colonies, totally undisturbed, FLOATED down small streams, without one death among them! There is one “cure” for them, but it requires a licensed exterminator to come apply the treatment.  Even at that, the ants are not destroyed – they simply go to live in your neighbor’s untreated lawn!

Does that sound vaguely familiar to you?  I believe it SO accurately represents sin in the Christian’s life.  It begins small – ant size.  We don’t always recognize it, because it can hide so cleverly among all the other things in our lives.  And like the ant hill, when we do come to terms with it, it can be miles deep in our hearts.  It WILL aggravate, it will multiply, and it WILL cause even the strongest among us to weep. It can appear indestructbile.

AND YET!  This week we celebrate the ONE who not only addresses sin in our lives, He lived and died to completely conquer it!  Unlike the exterminator who can only “chase off” the ants, Jesus Christ’s death on the cross PERMANENTLY killed sin!  In the born again believer’s life, His blood has the power to not only remove previous “colonies” of sin, it can prevent future ones.  THAT is a fact worth celebrating this Easter, and every other day!  To God be the glory!