Monday, September 17, 2007

How My Sin Looks To God

Saturday we had a "Crud War". We built a big 'slip-n-slide' on the hill in front of the church, put a pit at the bottom and filled it with spaghetti sauce, honey mustard dressing, cranberry sauce, peas, corn, hominy, tomatoes..... you get the idea. Then, the Turn Life kids had fun sliding into the pit. A few observations about that exercise.

The pit represented sin. The slide down the slope into the pit was pretty easy and seemed to build up speed as you went. So it is with sin. The slide down the slope seems pretty slow and managable at first, but then it gets out of control.

Once you landed in the pit, you were covered with some really nasty, really smelly stuff. That's what sin does to us in the eyes of God. It makes us really dirt, really smelly and really unpresentable.

If you hadn't been in the pit, everyone really smelled bad to you. On the other hand, if you had "pit-stuff" all over you, you really couldn't smell how bad it was. After awhile you got used to it. Again, so it is with sin. It's easier for me to recognize sin in someone else's life than it is in my own because after I've worn my sin for awhile, I get used to it.

Finally, we hosed everyone off to get them clean again. That's where Jesus is so important. I was dirty and filthy in the yuck of my sin and Jesus came and washed it all away so I can stand before God "clean".

It may have seemed like a really dumb idea to some, but the spiritual application will really stick with the kids who participated.

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