A Thought Crushed My Mind
Matthew 7:13-14 (NLT)
As I pedal my Trek between my humble home and my home-away-from-home (O’Bannon High School), I find myself scanning the garbage in the ditch too much. Rather than analyzing the pot-holed road ahead or the farmland being transformed or the glorious sky, my vision inevitable falls to these drainage ditches lining the sides of the road. Littering these ditches is trash of all sorts: bottles, plastic bags, packaging, car parts, road kill, McDonalds cups, flapping paper
Then a distant memory crossed my mind. As kids, we’d walk everywhere. Traipsing down the road with a friend one day, our eyes were drawn to a wad of flapping, glossy pages. My friend scooped it up first and when his eyes got really big, I lingered over his shoulder. What he flipped through was a tattered, weather-beaten copy of a porn magazine someone had tossed from a window. Although we couldn’t make out much and knew better, we leered anyway. So much so that we were late getting home and got punished.
All these years later, the lesson isn’t lost on me. While I should be walking through this life with my vision on Christ and running with eyes straight toward the finish line, I get distracted by the trash of this world. Images and possessions and money flash their wares from the ditches and steal our vision away. Then, like my friend and I as kids, we stop our journey and take a detour to see what the distraction is. Fall into sin. Miss the glory of the Son/sun surrounding us because were enamored by the garbage. Stealing our time away from the journey so much so that we could deal with the consequences of it years down the metaphorical road.
May we all remember to plod on this journey with the end in mind. A life well lived before the GOD who loves us and awaits our presence.
And the next time you see paper flapping in the breeze, trash it without looking at it. Or just keep pressing on…
