Psalm 7:14-15 - "Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made."
It was the funniest thing. Well, it wasn't funny at first.
I had grabbed a dustpan with a long, tall handle out of our church fellowship hall closet. We'd had a wonderful time last Friday evening with the kids at our Asperger's/Autism Support Group meeting. The littlest kids, two year old twins Aiden and Knox, had eaten cupcakes like two year olds are prone to do. There was more on the floor than in their mouth. So after everyone had left, a few of us were cleaning up. I had grabbed a broom and the dustpan with a long, tall handle.
I'd sweep the cupcake mess into the pan and start to walk away. As I started to walk, I'd look back at the floor and there were still a ton of cupcake crumbs in the exact spot that I'd just swept.
I'm sure I did this six or seven times, going back to sweep up the same crumbs, when, duuuuuuh, it dawned on me to look more closely at the dustpan that was almost an identical color to the floor.
The dustpan had huge holes in it where it was badly broken, so of course it wasn't holding the cupcake crumbs!
I know it sounds stupid that I hadn't noticed it sooner, but I'd never experienced a dustpan with holes of any size. (And yes, for those who are wondering, I've used a dustpan many times before!!!)
But the point of all this is kind of like this. God's word says that every human is a sinner. Therefore, we all have hearts that are broken, just like the dustpan. There are big ol' holes of brokenness in our hearts: brokenness from past hurts, from low self-esteem, from disappointments, from betrayals, from low self-confidence. And those heart-holes are a problem because our hearts, amongst other things, were made by God to be a tool, kind of like a dustpan, to help clean up messes in our relationships. But because of the holes, the messes never get cleaned up, stuff keeps "falling through the cracks," no matter how hard or how many times we try to sweep them up.
And the only way that things are ever going to change is if Jesus fixes the holes in our heart, which means we must daily present our hearts to Jesus, like a little child presenting a broken toy to a parent. And it's amazing then, when the holes in our heart are truly getting fixed by Jesus, how messes seem to suddenly or at least steadily and consistently start to disappear.
Dear Lord Jesus, I'm sure there are some messes before me today. So here's my heart, holes and all. I trust you to bring healing and repair to the holes and brokenness in me so that I can be your tool for helping to clean up some other things today. In Jesus's name, Amen.
Praise God!
(For an archive of "Day of Praise", please visit my daughter Calley's website at http://dayofpraisepc.blogspot.com/?m=1)
Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson
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