Category Archives: Sin

Are you sure?

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I’m a sucker for optical illusions. From time to time we all fall for a trick that enters our brains through our eyes and fools us into thinking something is, that isn’t.

Daredevil over Niagara Falls

For example, we can watch a movie of someone tight-roping across Niagara Falls and get all knotted up inside watching him take that  tremendous risk. Later we might learn it was just special effects and that the actor was actually walking on a tight rope only 3” off the floor during filming.

Ponzo illusion

Or, we might stare at a drawing for a long time trying to decide if parallel lines are the same length or if our eyes are fooling us. In reality, we’re fooling ourselves. We look at the lines and are sure they’re different lengths. Logic tells us that something farther away should be smaller, so the line located farther down the track must be longer. Actually, they’re the same length.

IMG_4168

I witnessed another illusion through my iPhone just this morning. Although I’m 4000 miles from Hans and his family of 6, they graciously send frequent pictures and videos to keep me current. Baby Andrew, only 7 weeks old, has begun to smile now, and today I received a picture that made him appear much older and bigger than his calendar age suggests.

I was taken aback when I opened the text, seeing how much he’d grown and changed since birth, and I haven’t even met him yet! Later, though, I saw other pictures of him on Facebook that included his bigger siblings and saw how really little Andrew still is, a reassuring discovery. His iPhone photo had just been taken at close range.

Magic

Life serves up illusions of all kinds. We’ve watched magic shows in which it seems the magician can perform real miracles! Our brains believe what our eyes see, but of course each of his tricks is just a ruse. When we’re told the how-to behind his “miracles”, we can’t believe we were so easily duped.

The absolute greatest of life’s illusions, though, can do some real damage. The magician behind them is an expert who delights in twisting truth into lies.

Let’s say we’re working hard to live righteously before God, but an opportunity comes along to fudge on something…. just a little. It would bring significant benefit to us, and so we seriously consider it. Eventually we decide to veer from a biblical standard and believe an illusion that seems trustworthy at the time.

There is, indeed, an immediate benefit, but it turns out to be short-lived. The lasting reality is that we’ve hurt ourselves and those we love by trusting in an illusion from the ultimate in deceivers, Satan. Every single time we’re tempted to do something shady, he is liar behind it.

So, the next time we’re marveling over an illusion, we’d better investigate its source. We just might save ourselves from a devastating encounter with the master-illusionist.

“The snake deceived Eve with his devious tricks,  ….the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world.” (2 Corinthians 11:3 & Revelation 12:9)

Healing Powers

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When I was growing up in the ‘40’s and ‘50’s, my friends occasionally disappeared from school for 2 weeks at a time, and sometimes I did, too. That’s because we all had to suffer through the debilitating diseases of mumps, measles (several kinds), chicken pox, flu, and several others.

These days children are blessed with vaccines. They can breeze through childhood skipping almost everything except the common cold. Well, that and a few other things.

Fever...

Today Birgitta and Louisa brought home two amoxicillin prescriptions after slogging through 3 days of 102 fevers, razor-sharp sore throats, and nausea. I was certain they had strep throat, but with today’s lab reports, we learned they have a strep-lookalike called pharyngitis, an inflammation of the tube that connects the nasal passages, throat, and esophagus.

Sometimes, the doctor said, pharyngitis is a precursor to strep, and so she wrote the prescriptions. It’s my opinion these meds will perk them both up, and I hope they’ll feel better soon.

Scripture has a number of things to say about healing. In the Gospels we watch Jesus speak words of wellness over people that bring instant good health. How thrilling it would have been to be part of the crowd that witnessed this phenomenon first hand! If we’d have been there, we’d also have noticed Jesus connecting his healings with belief in God. He forgave their sin. Or taught of God’s character. Sometimes he challenged people to live righteously from then on. And he often made mention of their personal faith in him.

Broken heart

Jesus also talked of healing of another kind, the healing of broken hearts. As we move  close to him during times of sadness, he promises to mend us. And compared to physical healing, heart-healing is probably the more important one.

The Bible also says something else about healing. The wounds Christ suffered when he was tortured and put to death are somehow the cause of healing within us, healing from sin. Isaiah 53 says, “With his stripes we are healed.” Although we can’t fully comprehend  how this works, we take him at his word and accept that his crucifixion wounds are what will allow us to be healed (and sinless) throughout eternity.

Although Jesus can certainly affect physical healing in people today, we don’t see much of it in our country. Maybe that’s because the more important bottom line is not how vigorous we feel in the here and now but how healthy our life after death is going to be. And whether we’re hale and hearty in this life or find ourselves battling illness, it’s eternal health that God wants us to focus on most.

Amoxicillin

Meanwhile, Louisa and Birgitta continue to swallow with difficulty and hope their antibiotics kick in soon. Though each had to pay a doctor’s bill today, their expenditures were miniscule compared to what Jesus paid to make sure they can have good health everlastingly.

“O Lord, if you heal me, I will be truly healed; if you save me, I will be truly saved.” (Jeremiah 17:14)

Explosions

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FireworksThree days ago on the 1st, looking toward the 4th of July, Louisa and I were out walking Jack late at night. As we passed the turn toward the beach, a big explosion sounded, not like traditional fireworks, but hole-in-the-ground big. Like dynamite.

It took me back to the days when our 4 sons were young and still living at home. Like most boys, they loved motors, weapons, and fire. Closely linked with fire were fireworks, and over the years they lit more than their share. Thankfully they reached adulthood intact, but I do remember a time when they caused enough neighborhood commotion with their explosions to bring the police to our house.

Apparently not much has changed with today’s boys, and as Weezi and I walked on, a police car sped past us, headed toward the beach. No doubt as they arrived, several youngsters were rapidly on the run.

Police departments have always winked at fireworks being exploded on the 4th of July, even in states where they’re illegal. Here in Michigan the rule has been that they’re “ok” on July 3, 4, and 5, but “not ok” any other days, a nice mix of grace and law. Still, there have been those who can’t quite comply, i.e. explosions on the 1st of July and the police pursuit that resulted.

If any society is to function well, laws and penalties have to be part of it. In the Bible we see the same thing, God setting up parameters but leaving it up to us to stay within them.

The most difficult of his rules involve invisible parameters. For example, Scripture says, “Put love of God ahead of love for anything or anyone else.” We might live lives that look like that, but what’s happening on the inside? That part is a lot harder.

We think, “Well, I’m doing pretty good at the Christian life. Besides, nobody’s perfect.” That’s like setting off explosions on July 1st. Close, but not quite right. The upshot finds us outside of God’s parameters and possibly even on the run the way the beach exploders probably were. Breaking the rules is sometimes fun, but paying the consequences never is.

The good news is that God does heart checks. It matters whether or not we’re making an effort to comply with him or working to dodge his rules. He knows we can’t be perfect, but that doesn’t coax him to lower his high standards, and he hopes we’ll stretch toward them. Doing so requires his help, though, and when we ask him for it, he’s pleased to give it. It also brings us out from under the impossible pressure of trying to be perfect and puts us under God’s generous grace where he chooses to give it.

Salvation itself is the best example of this, a perfect God requiring perfection from us but willingly accepting Christ’s perfection instead of ours. This means we can run toward him and not away from him, even if we break the rules. Maybe especially then.

And that’s an explosion of grace that should bring us all running.

“All are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:24)