Recently my son brought his fishing pole into the basement. We have rules about these types of things. Fishing poles belong in the shed or possibly on the porch. They do not come into the house. Fishing poles are like sticks, big rocks, snakes, and lizards. They belong outside. My son knows this. But like all of us, he sometimes does not do what he is told.
The bait on the pole looked like the one pictured above. It was big with numerous hooks designed to snare some large fish lurking beneath the surface of a local lake or river. Each of these hooks has a barb designed to keep the fish from getting off the hook. These barbs make extraction of a hook only slightly easier than extracting a tooth.
What do you think happened when my son brought his rod into the house? It would be nice if I could tell you that all went well, that the lure just slid across the tile floor and caused no trouble. But then I wouldn’t have anything to write about. No. The hooks, all three of them, eventually got snagged on our blue couch cushion. (Lures do this. They gravitate, almost like they are alive, towards the place they can do the most harm.) My son tried to remove them, but hooks are designed to embed themselves deeper the more you mess with them. By the time the cushion was laid contritely on my desk all three hooks were firmly entangled in the pillow.
After about thirty minutes of labor that included a knife, pliers, and more than one muttered word of frustration, I finally removed all three hooks. The pillow was still usable, but it was no longer whole. The hooks had left their mark.
As I sat extracting the lure, I thought how much this reminds me of my own life. I know what God tells me to do. Do not lose your temper. Do not get bitter. Do not be proud. Love your neighbor. [Insert your own sin here.] Yet I still bring sin into the house. Maybe I assume, like my son did, that the sin will not cause much trouble. It will innocently slide across the tile floor with little damage. But that rarely happens. Sin gravitates towards the place it can do the most harm. Sin has barbs. When sin enters it finds a target and embeds itself deep. The unfortunate person hooked may be my wife or my children or myself. But sin never leaves its catch whole. It can be removed but, there is always damage. If I am lucky the damage only takes a day or two to fix.
I am grateful for Christ and his forgiveness. He takes away my sins and gives me grace that I might be restored. The glory of this truth is beyond compare. But I do not want to just keep coming back for forgiveness. I want to learn to leave sin where it belongs. I want to listen to the Lord with an ear to obedience. Christ has not just given me grace to be forgiven, but he has also given me grace to overcome. When I lean on his grace sin is not given the chance to hook me or my family. It is left where it belongs, outside.<>
