A little girl had cut her own hair while her Mommy was gone. You can be sure, it was a terrible patchwork at best. When her Mommy got home she was horrified to see her child. “What did you do to your hair?” exclaimed the upset mother.
The little girl replied, “But, Mommy, how did you know? I hid all the hair very carefully in the wastebasket.”
We may think we have covered things up pretty good, but the evidence at the end of the day tends to be pretty incriminating. The wages of sin are death, says the Bible. You can hide the sin, but the death that follows will be there.
Look at your life and see if you need to deal with the source of the death.
Tags: cover-up, hiding, humor, sin
Sunday afternoon and Monday I took on the project of repainting our living room. It hasn’t been repainted since we moved in in 1995. So, my biggest project was prepping the walls before painting. Having raised three teens in that house, there were nicks and dings are over the place. Each dent needed filled and sanded. Every gouge the same. When I pried loose the cracked plastic corners on some doorways, the steel corners under the drywall flexed and broke big chucks of drywall patch loose. It was a mess.
But I carefully removed what was loose and patched the holes. Some holes required multiple patches. Then I carefully sanded them level. Then I covered the patches with drywall primer, and finally two coats of colored paint. Today the paint has dried and you can’t even find where those former blemishes were. Its like a huge eraser swept through the room and made it new again.
Love between brothers and sisters is supposed to work like that, as well. John said, “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” Have you allowed brotherly love to cover the sin of another, like dried paint on a wall covers blemishes? Think about this today.
Tags: born again, cover-up, forgiveness, sin
A children’s wading pool in an East Coast inner-city neighborhood had been closed for two years. City workers finally painted the pool, filled it with water, and opened it to the delight of excited children.
A short time later, though, neighborhood parents were furious. Eighteen children had cuts on their feet! It seems the pool hadn’t been cleaned out before it was painted. The workmen had merely spray-painted over glass debris on the pool bottom.
The harm done by these city workers is like the damage done by the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. They made cover-up into an art. They dressed for success. They knew how to make good impressions. But on the inside they were phony. Jesus called them “whited walls”: sepulchers looking pretty on the outside, but full of dead men’s bones on the inside.
Jesus also said, “All their works they do to be seen by men” (Matthew 23:5). What does this mean to you?
Tags: cover-up, genuine, Pharisees