Recently I was reminded of a true story I would like to share with you.
For the sake of privacy, I will
call the father John and the mother I will call Mary. The son will be Billy.
When Billy was growing up he
was very hyper, which inevitably got him into a lot of trouble. John and Mary
took Billy to the doctor about it. Of course, the doctor prescribed medicine to
calm him down. Since they did not want Billy to grow up learning to take drugs
for everything, even if it was prescribed medicine, they researched it on the
internet. They found that if they kept him off red and yellow food dye and didn’t
allow him much sugar he was calm. Perfect.
When Halloween came around
they didn’t want Billy to miss out on all the fun the other kids were having,
trick or treating, and playing games where they were winning candy. By the end
of the evening Billy had a whole lot of candy. Mary took it on herself to dole
out the candy to Billy. He got about two small pieces per day. That way he
could enjoy his candy without being too hyper.
They didn’t understand why,
with such a small amount of sugar Billy was extremely hyper. He was bouncing
off the walls. It didn’t make sense.
After about a week it was
time to wash Billy’s sheets. When Mary lifted the mattress to remove the bottom
sheet she found about 120 candy wrappers. Besides the candy his mother was giving
him, he was helping himself to an additional 15 or 20 pieces of candy each day.
Now it all made clear what was going on. John and Mary took care of the
problem.
It got me to thinking about
my mattress. My spiritual mattress that is. I am sure that all my life I have
hidden spiritual candy wrappers under my mattress, thinking God might not find
them. Of course, God sees right through my mattress and sees everything I have
hidden there. Somehow it always seems like a good idea at the time. Funny how I
always seem to think God won’t notice me bouncing off my spiritual walls.
Lucky for us, we serve an all-knowing
and all-seeing God, and He loves us. However, that seems to come with a lot of
correction.
My father used to say that
punishment is God’s strange work. In other words, He doesn’t like to correct
us. He does it because we need it, and He corrects us as gently as we allow Him
to. In Christianity we have a saying. “God loves us the way we are, but He
loves us too much to leave us this way.” We should thank God every day that He
does correct us. That is what keeps us on the path to spend eternity with Him.
When was the last time you
took a good luck under your mattress to remind yourself what candy wrappers you
are trying to hide from God? Do you really think He doesn’t notice you bouncing
off the walls?
Those candy wrappers have a
way of flattening right out so we don’t even notice them. But everything that
was wrapped up in them really takes a tole on us. We need to voluntarily hand
over the candy wrappers to God and let Him fix us. Better yet, we need to stop
sneaking the candy.
Think about it.
