I did the dishes in my kitchen sink yesterday. I know, big deal, right? But in fact it was a big deal. I was grinning ear to ear as I did those dishes. We had been without a kitchen faucet for four and a half days, due to a comedy of errors. I’d never realized how much I used the kitchen sink until I was without one. Washing hands, rinsing fruits and veggies, filling a pot of water, cleaning off plates before loading them in the dishwasher––simple tasks I take for granted suddenly weren’t so simple, and it wasn’t until I didn’t have the luxury of a kitchen sink that I realized how blessed I was to have a working faucet.
There are a great many number of things we take for granted or don’t realize their value until we lose them. Perhaps you’ve experienced this when your air conditioner gives out in the middle of a heat wave, or when you lose electricity due to a storm. If you’ve ever had to make do without a vehicle, you quickly realize how convenient it is to have a car in good working condition. When my son broke his leg two years ago, we realized we’d rarely stopped to thank God for the use of our arms and legs before, but you can bet when he was able to walk again, we were all praising God! Sometimes we don’t realize our blessings until we have to do without them.
Are we like this with our faith? Unfortunately, a number of us probably are. Most people in America cannot even fathom what it would be like not to have freedom of religion. I can walk across the street and talk to my neighbor about Jesus in broad daylight without having to worry that she’ll report me to the government. I can walk into church on Sunday without fear of being arrested. And as a result, this incredible blessing loses some of its incredible-ness. We can easily become apathetic or think of church as no big deal. We can even see it as a burden––just one more thing to squeeze into our busy schedules. Persecuted Christians in other parts of the world would love to have the freedoms we have to worship publicly. They would be shocked and saddened at our apathy.
But it goes deeper yet. Many life-long Christians who have never known anything else can sometimes lose sight of the powerful impact of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We’ve heard it so many times before that we sort of become dulled to it. We need to step back and recall exactly what the message of the Gospel is. What would it be like for someone who has never known this message to hear it for the first time? Often, people who have converted from other religions to Christianity are more zealous to spread the Gospel because they know how freeing it is to hear the beautiful message of forgiveness through Jesus after toiling under the burden of a false religion and its impossible demands.
Imagine what it would be like to be uncertain of your salvation. If your eternal destiny was up to you and how well you lived your life, you could never know for sure where you stood in the balance. How many good works negate a bad one? How can you keep track of your tally? How will you ever know if you’ve done enough? But the Good News tells us that none of that matters. We can’t live a good enough life no matter what. We don’t have to. Jesus did what we could not. His perfect life and sinless death in our stead gave us the gift of eternal life with Him! When you stop to really think about that, it’s mind-blowing. God becoming man to save us. Wow. That’s a message that’s too good to keep to ourselves. So go ahead and share it with someone today. Because it’s a very big deal indeed.
Photo is DIY Plumbing by Edward Peters
TruthNotes 