Okay, I am going to tell something about myself which gives a little insight to how my brain works. It won’t be a flattering look at my cognitive abilities, but maybe it will cause a good laugh and that might lead to a good lesson.
Have you heard of that tool people use to get the lint off of their clothes? Yep, a lint roller. I didn’t use one growing up and if my parents did, I didn’t see it or probably, more likely, just didn’t pay attention. So, I knew the gist of how one worked. You roll it over your clothes to get the lint off. Easy. Simple. No problem.
Somewhere around 2010, I had an interview to go to. I didn’t have a chance to go home and change after work and when I looked down at my black suit, it was covered in lint. So, I stopped by the store to buy one of the lint rollers. It was my first roller purchase and I decided to go with the smaller model. I sat in the car outside of my interview and unrolled the cover and proceeded to free my suit from lint.
I didn’t think anything else about the roller until a couple of weeks later. It sat in the middle compartment in my car. Okay…maybe it was longer than two weeks because I was tired of looking at it. I picked it up and pulled back the cover again and noticed that there was no more sticky on the thing. It was completely full of the lint from my suit and there was no more sticky. It was no longer of any use to me so, I chucked it into the trash.
Now, fast forward a year or two. I was in the salon doing hair and I looked over at the owner’s station. She kept a lint roller for her customers to get the hair off of their clothes when they were done. As I watched this customer, she picked up the lint roller, took the cover off, and noticed that it was completely covered with lint. I am expecting her to throw it in the trash like I did, but she proceeded to peel that sheet off and throw it away. I did a double-take. There was more than one sheet? You pull them off when they are done and there are more underneath? How had I not known this? I thought I knew how to do it by watching others, but I had never read the directions.
I have been thinking about this the last few days. I think this is how Christians act sometimes. Instructions sit there untouched, while they watch others to try to see how it is done. Obviously, this is not a good way to have a relationship with God. We are not called to put our faith in other people, but to put our faith in God. We should be going to the Word where the instructions are available to guide our lives. It is like a never-ending lint roller. It can catch all the junk we've let stick to us. Then we rip it off and we have a fresh layer and with each one, we get the wisdom on everything pertaining to life..
