Day 364 – No Small Thing
Having a Heart in a Sometimes Heartless World
Having a Heart in a Sometimes Heartless World
Scripture focus: Your flip and callous arrogance in these things bothers me. You pass it off as a small thing, but it's anything but that. Yeast, too, is a "small thing," but it works its way through a whole batch of bread dough pretty fast. So get rid of this "yeast." Our true identity is flat and plain, not puffed up with the wrong kind of ingredient. The Messiah, our Passover Lamb, has already been sacrificed for the Passover meal, and we are the Unraised Bread part of the Feast. So let's live out our part in the Feast, not as raised bread swollen with the yeast of evil, but as flat bread—simple, genuine, unpretentious. I wrote you in my earlier letter that you shouldn't make yourselves at home among the sexually promiscuous. I didn't mean that you should have nothing at all to do with outsiders of that sort. Or with crooks, whether blue or white-collar. Or with spiritual phonies, for that matter. You'd have to leave the world entirely to do that! But I am saying that you shouldn't act as if everything is just fine when a friend who claims to be a Christian is promiscuous or crooked, is flip with God or rude to friends, gets drunk or becomes greedy and predatory. You can't just go along with this, treating it as acceptable behavior. I'm not responsible for what the outsiders do, but don't we have some responsibility for those within our community of believers? God decides on the outsiders, but we need to decide when our brothers and sisters are out of line and, if necessary, clean house. 1 Corinthians 5:6-13 The Message
I’m kind of old - old enough to notice trends in recovery and relapse. One of the trends I notice when any of us are heading down the slope of relapse is an increased commitment to calling big things “small.” For example, early on in the recovery process, there is a big commitment to faithfully “working a program.” How we structure our programs may look different for different people.
Over time, when good things start to happen, and the “heat” of consequences begins to cool – sometimes our commitment to wellness cools as well. Some of the practices and disciplines begin to slip. I won’t get into the specifics – but you know what I mean, don’t you? We know what it feels like to be committed to health. And we know what it feels like to slip down the slippery slope of relapse – one small decision at a time.
So here’s my advice for today: be careful what you call small.
God has big plans for us; we’re going to need a big heart. We can’t get from here to there minimizing our inclinations and predispositions to live life trying to get our own way all the time.
Recommended reading: Malachi 1 and 2 in the morning; Revelation 21 and Psalm 130 in the evening
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