This morning I emptied the dishwasher,
not because I wanted to, but I had no where to hide all my other dirty
dishes piled in the sink. Because the water is a bit 'hard' in my
town, there was a water mark staining the rim of a wine glass. I am
fastidious when it comes to a clean glass.
So, I took my dish
towel and started the process of polishing the glass. How many of you
know the notorious reputation of wine glasses? Thin glass breaks as
easily as a butterfly wing. Not sure why I thought I had to 'man up'
on that stain, but apparently I rubbed too hard and the glass broke in
my hand. And most of the glass fell to the floor, shattering into a
gazillion shards. I had no idea a glass could get this broken.
No
kidding. I was stunned by the enormity of shatter-pattern across my
kitchen. There were shards on the rug three feet away, splinters under
the cupboards, glinty slivers reflecting light almost everywhere I
looked. It appeared there was more glass AFTER the breaking than
before. It looked like ten glasses had broken, not just one. I was
overwhelmed and didn't even know how to begin cleaning up this mess.
Something
else caught my eye. A red spot was growing and pooling on the
counter. It took some staring before I tied the red spots to a
throbbing that I suddenly felt in my little finger---yep, the pinkie.
A wicked slash right across the knuckle was opened giving blood
uninhibited freedom to spill.
This broken glass thing was getting
worse by the moment. How could a slip or carelessness, cause so much
mess and pain? If I had been asked to calculate and estimate the
volume of damage one broken glass could cause, I would have
UNDER-estimated by a bunch. I would have been no where near the
guess-timation of how much time would be consumed cleaning the counter,
picking up the big pieces, vacuuming the floor, washing, cleaning and
bandaging the laceration. I had no idea this could get that
messy...that broken.
I have to tell you, this is an analogy for
the shock and awe I experienced when I decided to 'live for myself,'
and no longer for God. Head strong and determined, I went my own way,
did my own thing. "It's time I did something for ME, after all these
years of serving everybody else!" I reasoned. 'How bad can it get,
really?'
ANNNND...I made this decision after guess-timating the
cost. Oh my, was I stupid. I wasn't even close to calculating how
broken I would become and how much damage I would cause to myself and
others...not even close.
Someone had told me years ago that sin is 'fun on credit,' and you will never know the price until the bill comes due.
What
if you had to live like this in other areas of life? Imagine this at
the grocery. There are no prices on items, you load your cart and you
are REQUIRED to pay whatever the cashier tells you. You can't take
items back. Once you get to the cashier, it's too late. And if you
don't pay, you go to prison and work off the debt with years of your
life.
Fun times, huh? No one would go to the grocery under those
terms. Yet, we go our own way, turn our back on God's wisdom and love,
give ourselves to the fun of sin...and we don't even know the price.
When
I sinned, I had no idea the years I would pay, the pain I would
inflict, the shame I would feel, the physical toll on my body, the
spiritual depletion in my soul, the nightmarish depression in my
mind...no idea it could get this broken.
Fast forward to now.
This morning, I took all the shards and pieces and splinters from the
broken wine glass and either sucked them into my vacuum or threw them
away in the trash. There is no putting the glass back together.
Humpty Dumpty had better odds and you know how that story ends.
But
here's the beautiful thing about God: Once I cried to Him, from a
shattered, scattered soul, He came to me...RAN to me. And for the last
two and half years, He has been putting me back together splinter at a
time, sliver at a time, shard at a time. Oh, the cracks still show,
but I am more like a glass than I would have ever imagined possible.
Thanks be to God who doesn't just throw us away!!