Spiritual Carbs

that we all love, but try to avoid out of shame.

We as Christians are often so afraid of being tainted by things of this world that we barricade ourselves off from it as much as we can, hoping to keep the evil at bay. Once we lock the door behind us we unfortunately are faced with the grim reality that while we did lock out the world, we also locked ourselves in with our greatest enemy: ourselves.

Turns out, the thing we try to avoid outside of us abides inside of us as well. We carry it with us no matter where we go or how much we try to rid ourselves of it.

On our quest for ultimate sanctification, we forget that our lives are full of God providing for us by “unclean” means. If you’re reading this on any kind of smartphone, chances are that someone along the line had to be exploited for the materials to be extracted from the earth so cheaply that we could all buy them for a semi-reasonable price. Perhaps they were forced to do it, against their will. Some things we don’t know, nor do we probably want to know.

Our daily bread that we use to make toast every morning is the brainchild of secular scientists finding ways to alter the DNA of wheat itself so that our farmers can have higher yields and we as a world can avoid a famine. Yet somehow that same wheat, that same DNA, those same materials used to make the laboratory equipment, that same scientist, everything along the way, has been declared good by our God.

Though the scientist may refuse to acknowledge his Creator, it still doesn’t change the fact that he is merely working with God’s creation. He isn’t capable of making a new type of grain out of nothing. He is limited in how he creates, but his God isn’t.

Many of us are familiar with the Christmas story. And yet we seem to forget just how odd it is that the magi went to Bethlehem in the first place. The magi weren’t exactly the kind of people that we would call “holy.” Actually, even in our modern era we would probably tell them that they were guided by demons rather than angels based on their means of finding their way towards their Savior—and then question the validity of their savior.

Yet somehow amidst all of their flaws, God somehow met them in their own vocations, their own places in life, and giving them a sign of His love for them that was so specific to them that only they would notice. The priests of the temple didn’t notice the star, but the magi sure did.

We serve a God that meets us where we are, even in our own filth. We trudge our way into mires made up of our own sin, and somehow think that maybe we can drain the water out based on how well we behave in relation to what we know about God. And though sometimes it might get easier to walk through, we are quick to forget that it wasn’t God that placed us in the swamp: we put ourselves there.

The hope of the gospel today is that though you may not be able to shake your proclivity to sin, you have been given a chance to rid yourself of the guilt and shame that is more destructive to your soul than sin on its own.

You have been called to not be bound by sin any longer. You will for sure still sin, but you no longer have to continually wear the weight of your own sin. That is the good news. Because of Jesus we can go out into the world and serve God and our neighbors joyfully, without worrying about tomorrow.

You have been forgiven. You don’t have to keep earning your way into the kingdom. Rest in His peace and assurance.

God delights in meeting you at church, but He also delights in meeting you wherever you go. He is often disguised as your neighborhood baker. You may not think about Him too much, yet He still wakes up every day and prepares your daily bread. Sometimes you just have to get in the car and trust that the mundane things of this world, because of God, is also alive. If you didn’t praise Him, the bread itself would.