October 21, 2011
Every Step You Take
When my daughter and her dog stop by for a visit I often take Charlie
for a walk in a nearby park. I always carry plastic bags and clean up any
deposits, but it’s obvious that not all pet owners are so conscientious. I’ve
noticed that when I’m on the meandering sidewalk I can relax and take in
nature, but as soon as Charlie needs to go off the path my eyes are focused on
the ground watching every step I take. I can just see this scenario being
played out in the life of a believer. If we stray off the narrow path, we’d
better be looking out for the poo.
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2 comments:
Gail;
-----Why should we worry about stepping in a little pile here and there? You don’t ever have to actually touch the bottom of your shoes. And we get to where we’re going all the same. Besides, a small child wouldn‘t worry about stepping in it; he probably even carries some of it in his britches. Jesus said we should come to Him like children.
-----But then, once we’ve come to Him, we seem to find in Him an objective towards attaining mature manhood to the measure of the fullness of Christ. And you know, there’s a lot of stuff about mature manhood. For instance, there is this awareness thing, like Paul told the Thessalonians, “...keep awake and be sober,” (I Thes 1:6) and the Ephesians, “...keep alert and persevere.” (Eph 6:18) To the Corinthians he said, “Be watchful...Let all that you do be done in love.” (I Cor 16:13a, 14) Now that’s an interesting combination. If I were a bit more mentally awake than a child, I would certainly smell that stuff on the bottom of my shoes. And sobriety learned by tradition tells us we don’t want it on our hands. In fact, we so much don’t want it on our hands that we don’t want it anywhere around us - just in case we‘re careless with our hands. Love is kind of knowing how other people feel good, in the real sense of the term “good”, and then doing that to them. And they don’t want to smell poo or have it on their hands, either. So to love them is to not track poo around them. And to do that, you have to not step in it. So by that one instance, it is rather apparent there’s a lot to manhood, and none of it cares much for pooy shoes.
-----So do you suppose we built our sidewalks around the poo, or that we poo the pooch off the walkway? I suppose it’s a little of both. But the metaphor starts to break down here. Because a lot of people don’t only step in poo regardless, they play in it. And others poo their pooches right there on the sidewalk! And think the better of it! I go to church with a lot of lovely people. They’re genuine in calling on the Lord; you can tell by how they love each other. But this Sunday one of the pastoral interns is going to preach, and she’s a woman. Most folks there don’t see a bit of problem with that, or with having women for elders. But it causes the thinking type some pain between the ears trying to figure out which of those gals might be the husband of one wife. And it causes even more pain trying to figure out how to listen to a woman speak in church when after telling the Corinthians that women are not to speak in church, Paul said that if someone didn’t take what he was saying as a command from the Lord, we weren’t to pay attention to him. Or her. That’s why I’m leaving the service early to go home and not miss any of Tim Tebow’s first start. See how easily poo rubs off onto each other? And it makes life really tricky when so much of what is poo to one person is candy to another. I would think we might not want to teach one another what’s poo and what’s candy and just let the simplicity of the Bible tell us what it says without sassing back. And when you really think about sassin‘ the Bible, that‘s when you begin to realize that a lot of poo startes out as good candy.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Love this post..but even when we are on the right path, we still have to look out for others poo that ends up in our way. We have a nice park where I live that has a perimeter walking route. I'm annoyed when I'm walking and come up to something on the path and it is poo. So sometimes I knock it into the unused field with a stick to make the path nicer for someone else. The path is quite wide, I just want it nice for everyone.
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