You’ve been there. You make your way over to the kitchen with your mind and taste buds set on one thing and one thing only. And as you open the refrigerator — or crack open the pantry — you not only find that piece of fresh fruit that exotic chunk of cheese or the loaf of homemade French bread you also find what looks like dark green shag carpet growing all over it. Oh the joy of finding the fuzzy furry little friend we call mold chilling all over your food.
If you think about it mold is far more present and active than we might realize.
Consider Romans 8:20-21: “For the creation was subjected to frustration not by its own choice but by the will of the one who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
If you were to take a good hard look at our world you would quickly notice the horrible things that exist within it. Genocides disease war abuse oppression — the list goes on and on. And if we were to take a good hard look into our own lives and hearts we would notice some pretty nasty things as well — anger pride selfishness apathy materialism lust etc. The Bible uses one word to describe all of this — decay. According to the Apostle Paul all of these actions impulses and habits are like a giant pile of rotting moldy strawberries. All of those things are a type of fungus that is destroying and spoiling all that is good and right.
Author Stephen Charnock puts it this way: “Our sinful patterns of behavior are not just arbitrarily wrong they are quite literally self destructive …What seems on the surface to be innocent pleasures or even the promise of an experience that makes life better or worth living in reality slowly tears people apart.
Sin is a cancer that has begun to tear everything apart. If we pass it off as anything less serious we are only fooling ourselves.
The only medicine and remedy for the sickness that plagues our lives and our world is a more thorough understanding of the greatness of God. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says that we are transformed into God’s image liberated from our personal decay and able to help liberate all of creation from its bondage to decay only when we continually behold the glory of the Lord.
Many of us try to live godly lives without any thought or connection to God. Maybe we heard about or were blown away by his greatness at some point in our lives but over time we have lost sight and forgotten about it completely. And how foolish that is because there is none like him in all of creation!
The God of the universe is bigger than anything we have ever dreamed of. Although sin and evil can seem powerful and attractive they are nowhere near as powerful and attractive as the goodness of God. Whether it is the world itself the people that he has placed in it the amazing abilities and talents he has given to each of us or more importantly his sovereign rule over all creation his ability to cleanse and forgive and redeem mistakes our God truly is great.
May we never lose sight of his greatness or simply pay lip service to it but instead allow it to free us and our world from the fuzzy green shag carpet that is slowly eating us away.
Note: You can hear more about the greatness of God every Wednesday at Collide held at 7p.m. Elkins Auditorium.