The Wading Pool

“As it is written in the Law of Moses, all this disaster has come upon us; yet we have not made our prayer before the Lord our God, that we might turn from our iniquities and understand Your truth.” Daniel 9:13

Those words were written over 2500 years ago, but don’t they ring true today?  Praise God, there is forgiveness of sin to be found in Jesus, and that all my sins were taken away by His once-for-all sacrifice on the cross!  But sin and rebellion, they still have consequences, then and now.  And then, as now, we usually choose not to see “the end of the matter”, where the sin will lead, but choose momentary pleasures in spite of the consequences.

When I was a kid, my uncle used to always tell me “you have to touch the stove to see if it’s hot.”  He especially loved to tell me this when I bought a Ford.  He was not a fan.  He happened to be right.  I bought a 98 Ford Explorer that was a lemon.  Every time I saw him, he’d remind me that he told me the stove was hot.

History is replete with examples of our “touching the stove”.  Adam and Eve in the garden.  The Israelites’ failure to rid the Promised Land of all the inhabitants, and the ensuing idolatry.  Jeremiah’s 40 year call for repentance that were ignored and followed by 70 years of captivity.  My dad gave me countless pearls of wisdom that I promptly ignored, and then endured the repercussions of.

Why do we do it?  Why do we repeatedly fail to listen?  I think it goes all the way back to the beginning, and the desire to be “like gods.”  We want to determine our future.  We want to have  a say.  We want to prove it can be done.  But you know what?  If the stove is hot, it’s going to burn you!  If God says “Hey!  If you do (insert sin here), this is what’s going to happen!  You’re going to get hurt, and it won’t be fun!”, perhaps we should listen!

Honestly, it’s a matter of submission. Or rather, our dislike of submission.  We want to be the master of our own destiny, and in a way, we are.  If we choose to “touch the stove”, we’re going to get burned.  We chose that on our own.  So if that’s you, don’t start crying out “Why?!! Why did it burn me?!!”  We were all told it was hot.