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A Morning View From the Patio

I was sitting on the back porch of during a home visit and the family had caught another skunk in their trap. This was the fourth one they had recently captured. The county animal control officer came to remove the skunk. We continued to have a great visit and were in conversation when the officer was walking back to share her report with the skunk properly captured. 
I was amazed that she captured it and there was no hint of the pungent spray a skunk uses for defense. I asked the couple and they said that is because the skunk is dead. It was properly euthanized. I thought the skunk was just being relocated while in reality, it was permanently relocated to death. Being an animal lover I was a little taken back. I know it was a skunk, but couldn't it just be moved? The answer was it could be, but it would continue to be a problem The only way for it to stop was to euthanize the skunk. 
Friends, none of us desire to be sprayed by skunks, but how many of us allow skunks to hang around because we do not want to have them properly removed? If we do not remove the skunk from our lives we eventually will get sprayed. 
We do the same thing with sin in our lives. We allow sin to hang out because it is something I can control. Perhaps it really is not that big of a sin and it has been defeated because I am forgiven by God. We justify our sin and because it is there, eventually we will get sprayed by the pungent spray of the sin in our lives. The only way for sin to go away is for us to let it die and stop allowing ourselves to be tempted by it. We must die to sin and live for Christ.

“What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.” - Romans 6:1-7

Peace,

PB


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