So Serious Saturday #12

Fiction needs a basis in reality. Exercising non-fiction muscles once in a while benefits an active imagination, channeling creative energies as it focuses on a subject. So Serious Saturdays will be an active place for critical essays or writing about reality in the context of real events - even when it is not written on Saturdays.

Type: Journal/Encouragement/Theology

Hung Up

Derek Hough was injured on "Dancing With the Stars". When I heard the news I wondered if it was his back, or something else that had already given him problems.

It happens quite frequently that an athlete reinjures the same body part, even years after the initial injury. I know a guy who has to be careful with his knee because of an old catcher injury.

Similar recurring pitfalls can catch us, too. Mothers fall back into addiction to pills or alcohol. Young men are drawn back into gambling away their futures. You trust the wrong person, again.

Deeper weakness can be subtler, yet even more dangerous. Hidden anger and fear accumulate and become dark and bitter seeds that keep you awake at night far longer than coffee. Depression casts shadows over your dreams, relationships, and daily tasks, and you do not assemble an effort to fight back. Curses multiply in your heart and thoughtlessly spew from your mouth when you give them no leash, and they end up biting everyone exposed, infecting them with poison and darkness.

Instead, we are called to fight these semi-permanent battles every day we are alive. The early leader of the Jerusalem church, James, writes, "Resist the devil and he will flee from you" (James 4:7). Resistance will set you in opposition to another force. The promise of conflict scares our modern sensibilities, which tell us that peace, at whatever cost, is best.

He does not say it would be easy or even comfortable, but he did not say the war had to be fought alone. James further writes, "Come near to God and he will come near to you" (James 4:8). The image always reminds me of the art on the Sistine Chapel ceiling in which God is not crowding the man, but giving him his space to make a choice: to reach or not to reach?

The second part of the verse in the book of James should not be ignored, either: "Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded." As much as the tone sounds imperative, it is not a command more than it is an action plan. To wash dirty hands means to acknowledge that the hands are dirty. Some people do not go to the doctor's because they do not want to acknowledge that they are sick. Some are repulsed by the idea of repenting from sin because they do not want to acknowledge that there is a problem.

Whether you acknowledge it or not makes no difference to the truth of a statement; acknowledging a fact only makes a difference when the truth changes something in your own life, when it becomes essential to focus on that truth and let all other things fall into place, holding onto the strength of God, which is mightier than you and your recurring injury.

Besides, the apostle Paul wrote to imperfect people,saying, "Do not give the devil a foothold" (Ephesians 4:27). Do not give the enemy any excuse to enter your door and hurt you again, do not make it easy for the enemy to enter where you live and breathe while you live and breathe. 

We are not called to be perfect vessels, but to be perfected by the undeserved love of a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, who absolutely knew who he died for, and knows who he rose for.  Allow him to help you through the inevitable recurring pitfalls.