Saturday, May 30, 2009

Random Thoughts- 29

Travelling to the clinic for my morning practice, I saw a dog, a Pomeranian, lying dead on the road, probably crushed by a speeding vehicle. No one cared to remove it from the site. Perhaps it must have strayed from a nearby villa onto the road and met this gory end. The scene vanished from my mind as I got involved with my work at the clinic.

Travelling back, when I reached the spot where the dead dog lay, I saw a dead crow lying beside it, again struck by some speeding vehicle. This seemed quite unusual and I wondered how the crow now lay there. The only explanation that seemed to fit was that the crow had spotted the dead dog lying on the road and had ventured to peck at it for a while not realizing that death was stalking it also.

Thinking about this, a few verses from the book of Jude suddenly came to mind. Maybe not very related but still thought provoking.
"Keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. Be merciful to those who doubt; snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear - hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh. (Jude 1:21-23)

While evangelising and dealing with persons who are sinning sexually or in any other way, if we are not really spiritually strong and prepared to deal with these kind of sins and keep ourselves pure, we can easily fall into the same sin and be trapped by satan to do his bidding.

The attitude of "hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh." will help us in this.

Random Thoughts- 28

Weeds are a problem because they impede the growth of the sapling that we plant. Some weeds are easy to remove but some like creepers entangle the different parts of the sapling and not only impede the growth of the young plant but also crush them.

So are some sins in the lives of believers. Some sins are easy to overcome but some are like creepers because they entangle the believer's spiritual life crushing it and making it unproductive.

Trying to remove creepers that have entangled the sapling or growing plant is difficult. If one tries to remove it from the top, it invariably pulls the plant apart, so the best thing is to pull out the root of the creeper. It will soon dry up no more harming the plant.

Sins that entangle the spiritual lives of believers have to be pulled out from its roots. It's no use dealing with them from the top i.e. sinning and confessing, sinning and confessing. As Jesus said, whatever is making us sin must be removed from our very presence. Dirty books, novels, TV, Internet (i.e. if you don't know where to stop in dealing with these channels of entertainment) or anything that leads us into sin must be cast aside so that it will no longer entangle our spiritual lives and make it unfruitful.