“Attention Ladies and Gentlemen, this Delta flight today is peanut-free”.
This announcement preceded all the other announcements on one of my recent flights. On our flight was an unaccompanied minor who was fatally allergic to peanuts and therefore, none of us would receive the tiny packets of peanuts that I always look forward to, nor could anyone open up their PB&J’s or Nutter Butters, or peanut M&M’s. There would be zero tolerance of peanuts of any sort on this flight. This announcement was serious. No one wanted to witness or contribute to the horror of an unaccompanied minor going into anaphylactic shock while trapped on a plane 30,000 feet above the ground. It was a life or death issue and everyone appreciated the severity of this allergy. This warning was a new one to me, but only new in its specificity and location.
We get warnings all the time concerning things that can kill. Don’t smoke. Stay out of the sun. Don’t text and drive. “Don’t drink, don’t chew, don’t go with girls who do.”. We have learned what is dangerous and what can kill us and we change our habits and guide our children to stay off of these fatal paths. I am quite certain that none of you take your young children to tanning beds. We see the statistics and believe in the results, and so we adhere to the new course, but I wonder why we (esp. Catherine) are not equally as vigilant to close the proverbial airplane door to sin in our lives. Have we not been warned?
Jesus said in Matthew 5:29 (NIV) “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
Of course, I realize that we are not to go and gouge our eyes out, but why don’t we see sin for the fatal toxin that it is? Worse than a peanut to an allergic child, we consume sin and let it dizzy us, cloud our vision, make us sick and faint, nauseate us, irritate us like a rash, take the wind out of our lungs, unbalance our heartbeat and slowly choke us. We can recognize our sin as easily as we can recognize a peanut, but have we become so anesthetized to God’s grace and patience that we don’t see the danger of our sin? We must not even allow it in the door. We are all going to sin and fail and fail again until we are in heaven and perfect like Jesus, but until that day, this same Jesus has given us the eyes to see our sin and the power to overcome it. In his grace and mercy, Jesus reveals it to us and only by his grace are we able to turn from it. Oh how I pray that I would be as allergic to sin as that child is to peanuts. I know that while I am sojourning here, the father who set me on this journey has not left me unaccompanied. He is with me and will continue to help me recognize the danger and give me the victory to overcome