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Topic: Water (04/26/04)
TITLE: Lake Walking By Glenn A. Hascall 04/26/04 |
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by Glenn A. Hascall
Walking around the lake I noticed the winter had done a number on the shorelines. A season without use left a tremendous amount of debris lining the banks and clinging to trees and shrubs.
Many of my wife’s family joined us for a meal the day following this revelation. Several of the guys wanted to go for a walk. At the last second I grabbed a handful of plastic bags and thought to pick up some of the debris I came across as we walked around the lake.
I didn’t realize I was beginning a crusade. Two of the other guys picked up the battle cry and we spent a few hours picking up several trash cans full of trash; plastic bags, fast food containers, wrappers from fishing lures, plastic and glass bottles, styrofoam containers, a rubber ball, a pillow, a glove, insulation, a broken lawn chair, aluminum cans, a piece of carpet, a pair of trousers, a twenty pound bag of water softener salt, a plastic gas container, and an odd assortment of chip bags.
We finished with a surprisingly real sense of accomplishment. We had single-handedly reclaimed the lake from those who carelessly left reminders of their visits behind. A few days have passed and I noticed remains of a fast food meal in an area we had cleaned just days ago and it occurred to me that the lake that was so painstakingly cleaned up has a unique kinship to the human heart.
You see, because we all sin, our hearts get amazingly cluttered in a very short period of time. We contend with bits and pieces of pride, gossip, the occasional lie, anger, bitterness, unforgiveness, envy, the desire to have what belongs to another, and the list goes on and on.
Yet there was a man who was able to reach every area of our heart and in His crusade of holiness accepts our invitation to clean our heart by picking up and discarding the sin that so easily finds a home within our being.
And because He has observed mankind from the beginning He knows that we will need to send another invitation for a heart cleaning. He might even have to do it several times a day. But He willingly complies with our request and intentionally forgets the sinful debris He has already cleaned up.
Three guys spend three hours cleaning a lake and will remember this unusual gesture for the rest of our lives. Jesus cleans millions of hearts daily and forgets what He’s cleaned up.