Restoration

A man walked into a pawnshop and went straight to a worn down piece of furniture hidden in the back of the store.  He moved several other items that had been stacked against it and stepped back to take a look.

The piece of furniture was once a beautiful writing desk made with fine craftsmanship, but the former beauty had been worn away through years of use as it served first one family and then another.  These years were followed by even more years of disuse after it had been left out on the curb and salvaged by the pawnshop owner.

It was no longer beautiful.  Its drawers were broken, its roll-top in splinters, its feet uneven and wobbly, its stain faded and surface scratched and dented.  Looking at it, it was hard to imagine what the piece had looked originally.  You certainly wouldn’t want it in your home.  It was a real eyesore.

Even so, the man pulled out the desk and told the shop owner that he wanted to buy it.  The shop owner named a price – a surprisingly high price considering the condition of the desk – but the man was willing to pay it, and the transaction was made.

The man loaded the desk in his truck and took it home, where he placed it in his garage.  He turned on the overhead light and gave the desk a thorough inspection.  He took note of the broken drawers, the splintered roll-top, the wobbly feet and the scarred surface.  Nothing escaped his trained eye.

Having completed his assessment, he mentally planned what repairs and improvements would need to be done.  Then, he turned off the light and headed to bed.  Tomorrow would be soon enough to begin the work.

The next day, the man arrived late in the afternoon with new lumber and a collection of well-worn tools.  He was a carpenter, and these were the tools of his trade.  He had begun and finished many projects before this one, and he would begin and finish many more.  The work thrilled him.  It was a labor of love, and he thoroughly enjoyed taking something discarded and bringing out its true value.

With a smile of anticipation and a clear vision of the finished product, the man turned the desk on its side and sawed a heart-shaped piece from the bottom panel.  He then replaced it with a custom-made heart piece – golden in color with intricate etchings and made from a fine wood.  It was on the bottom panel, where it was unlikely that anyone would see it but him, but it was his trademark and showed the love and care he put into refurbishing the piece.  Those familiar with his work knew where to look for his signature.

He turned the desk back up and began with structural repairs.  He replaced one of the feet, repaired the broken drawers and built a new roll-top.   Before long, evening arrived.  The man put away his tools and retired for the night.

The next day, he returned to his work.  Using a sanding block, he began working on the inner parts of the desk that no one typically saw.  This might have seemed like a waste to most, but again, this was his trademark.  He always began from the inside and worked his way out.

After a week, an observer might not have seen much difference, but the man knew how smooth the inner boards had become, how silently the drawers slid in and out, how strong the joints and the frame had become.  It was a work of quality he was engaged in – not a work of speed.  He was not concerned about turning a quick profit; he wanted the finished product to be a blessing to some family who needed it.  He wanted it to bring them joy for years and years to come.  He thought about the children and the grandchildren who would live life around this desk, and he wanted the changes he made to bless generations.

And so, he worked, slowly but deliberately – never leaving off a task until it was done to his exacting standards.  Then, he moved on to the next area that needed repair, and then the next…

When he was done with the inner parts, he began work on the outer, and the piece began to really transform.  Each board was smoothed to take away the abuses of the past.  But he didn’t remove every dent or every scar.  Some, he knew, added value to the piece and gave it character.  Still, even these blemishes received his painstaking attention.  In fact, he spent more time on them than he did on the smoother parts, and when he was done, they became the most interesting parts of the whole piece.  What was ugly became beautiful and interesting, and those who saw them would want to know more.

When everything was prepared and the dust and grit and stains of past years had been removed, the man applied a covering.  It was a deep, reddish stain that soaked into the wood and provided a protective finish.  It was such a unique color that those who knew recognized it as the work of the man whenever they saw it.

The man then sealed the piece with a clear, protective coat, installed new hardware to the drawers and roll-top and finally stood back to admire his work.  The piece was impressive and made you want to come closer to look.  Its wood was so smooth that the man could literally see his reflection in it.  He smiled and said a quick, “well done!” to himself.  It was good.

In fact, it looked even better now than the day he originally created it.  You see, the pawnshop owner thought he was taking advantage of the man when he sold the desk at such a high price, but the man always knew the quality of the workmanship, because he had made it himself many years before.  Years of abuse and neglect had all but ruined the desk, but the man trusted in his own unique ability to restore the piece – even to make it better than before.  So he paid the high price, and he had no regrets.

Looking at the restored work, he knew exactly who he was going to give it to – a gift for a family that he dearly loved.

Upgrade

It’s been a long year, and it’s only March.  I’ve been on the road 47 of the last 65 days, spent over 220 hours in meetings, been on 35 airplanes for over 100 hours and waited no telling how long in airports between flights.  I’m tired.  I mss my family.  I’m ready to go home.

I was the first one on the plane to Bangkok, and I had been in my seat for about ten minutes when a flight attendant came to see me.

“Are you Mr. Kientz?”

“Yes, I am.”

“May I see your boarding pass?”

“Sure, here it is.”

“Here’s your new boarding pass.  You’ve been upgraded to business class.”

“Upgrade.”

Weary travelers the world over long to hear that word.  Thos who frequent business class don’t understand the envy we economy class fliers feel when they draw the curtain between us and the priveledged.  Bigger seats, more leg room, fancy meals, better movies on bigger screens, a better blanket, a bigger pillow….ahhhh….Upgrade!

As I settled into my seat, very thankful for the unexpected blessing, I opened my Bible to John 2.  It begins with Jesus attending a wedding.  The host of the wedding ran out of wine, and Jesus’ mother brought the problem to Jesus.  In his first earthly miracle, Jesus turned as much as 180 gallons of normal water into wine that was even better than what the party-goers had been drinking before.

Upgrade.

The very next story tells of Jesus chasing all the money changers and those selling animals for sacrifice out of the temple.  He was incensed that they had turned His Father’s house into a market where people profited off the worship of the Lord, so he put together some cords to fashion a whip and began cleaning house.

Upgrade.

Chapter 2 ends with the Jews asking Jesus to perform a miracle to prove His authority.  He tells them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it up.”  Of course, He wasn’t talking about the building He had just cleaned out.  He was talking about the temple of His body.  Jesus knew that His purpose was to die for our sins.  But His death was just the end of the beginning, because He would raise His body back from death to life.  He would still have a body, but the new body could fly and walk throught walls!

Upgrade.

But that’s just the smallest part, because Jesus’ death did so much more!  It paid for every sin we have ever committed or ever will.  It bought us life with God for all eternity if we will just leave our economy class seat and agree to move to first class, where we will get our own new bodies one day – bodies that won’t get sick or die – bodies that won’t be tempted to sin – bodies set free to love God without reservation or selfishness and love each other without resentment, bitterness, or jealousy and love ourselves without guilt or shame!

Upgrade.

Parable of the Hearts

We almost always call it “The Parable of the Sower,” but the Sower isn’t the key focus of the lesson.  The Sower (or farmer) is Jesus in each telling (Mathew 13, Mark 4, Luke 8), and His role doesn’t change.  Likewise, the seed he sows/plants doesn’t change.  It represents the Word of God in each story.  The key focus of the lesson is the soil, and the soil represents our hearts.

So, “The Parable of the Hearts” goes like this.  Jesus entered His field (the world) and scattered His Word.  Literally, He “broadcasted” it (a method of sowing seed), meaning that He sent it out into all directions, so that everything was covered.  He didn’t discriminate about where the truth went; He just allowed it to fall where it landed.

Those who hear it have four types of hearts:

• Hard Hearts – Those who have hearts so hard that nothing could grow in them.
• Shallow Hearts – Those who have hearts where truth can grow but not flourish, because it can’t go deep.  Difficult times make it wither.
• Choked Hearts – Those who have hearts where truth can grow but not flourish, because worry, fear, comfort, wealth, and desire choke it out.
• Fertile Hearts – Those who have hearts where truth can grow and flourish.

Luke makes it clear that those with Hard Hearts are not saved, but I think a strong case can be made that we will see the rest in heaven.  Shallow hearts and Choked Hearts don’t realize their true potential, but the seeds of truth do grow in them for a short period of time.  They are like Christians who allow themselves to be deceived by Satan and settle for less than the abundant fruit that Jesus said was possible.

Now look at the parable from a different angle.  The four types of hearts can really be used to describe just one Christian heart in its different patches of soil.

• Hard Heart – There are places in my heart that are hard to God’s truth.  Like the pathway in the parable, these places have been trampled down by the world.  These are the places I’m not yet willing to trust to His care – places of hurt and fear.  The seeds of His truth can’t even break the surface, so Satan comes and snatches them away.
• Shallow Heart – Other places are quick to receive the seed.  For example, I may fully agree with my pastor that I should love my neighbor…in principle.  As long as I’m not tested in this area, I may seem very godly to those around me.  But if my neighbor mistreats me or fails to meet my expectations, God’s truth will wither in the heat of my anger.
• Choked Heart – Some parts of my heart are choked with a desire for comfort and safety.  I know I should trust God to use me however He sees best, but “please don’t make me a missionary to Africa, Lord!”
• Fertile Heart – Thank goodness there are also places in my heart where I’ve learned to trust God completely, where He is working to produce an incredible harvest.  I’ve got to work hard to keep the weeds out, but if I’ll acknowledge a young weed to the Lord, He will remove it for me.

Our hearts are a garden full of different kinds of soil, and daily we are presented with opportunities to let the great Gardener go to work in them.  If we will let Him, He will break up the hard soil, clear up the rocks that make the shallow soil shallow, pull the choking weeds and continue to fertilize the areas where the soil is rich and deep.

It’s hard work that never ends this side of heaven, but each day, the great Gardener shows up ready to work.  All we have to do is to invite Him into the garden.

Fair and Equal

My teenage son sometimes gets upset about the extra demands we, his parents, and others make of him. His chores are sometimes harder; his homework takes longer; his responsibilities are greater; our expectations of him are higher.

“Tough noogies,” we tell him. “You also get more privileges and more opportunities.” Then we throw a little Spiderman-ese at him so he’ll understand, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Or in the words of Jesus,

“… From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” (Luke 12:48 )

Jesus and Uncle Ben were saying the same thing: Fair doesn’t always mean equal.

In Matthew 20:1-16 Jesus tells a parable that makes the point. Some workers were hired to work in a vineyard. The landowner goes out not just once or twice but five times to hire workers throughout the day. In fact, he hires the last group at five in the evening, when there is just a little daylight left.

Then, he does something even more strange. He has the foreman line all the workers up to pay them. Those hired last are first to get paid, and the landowner generously pays them a full day’s wage. He does the same with the next group and the next. When the group that was hired first comes up for their wages, they receive the same amount: a single day’s wage.

If this seems unfair to you, you’re not alone. Those hired first were feeling a little righteous indignation at having to work all day and receive the same reward. After all, they had been there during the heat of the day. The new guys had barely put hoe to soil before the day was up.

But our reaction is based on a faulty assumption: that the landowner’s generosity needs to be equal to be fair. The landowner was fair with all the workers. He paid the first workers what he had promised them: a full day’s wage. For the other workers, he promised to pay them what was right and actually gave them more than they deserved. To the early workers’ indignation, he replied, “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?” (Matthew 20:15)

The parable teaches us a lesson about how we are to view God’s grace. We are the workers, and God has called us to go to work in His vineyard. No matter when He allowed us to join the work, we are to keep it up until He returns to reward us. When He does, it would be silly for us to look at our brothers and sisters in Christ and complain, “You have made them equal to us!” …as if we were something special!

We will be standing shoulder-to-shoulder in eternity with Samuel, Elijah, Daniel and others, who presumably gave their entire lives to serving the Lord. But we will also be shoulder-to-shoulder with the thief on the cross, who couldn’t do much serving when he finally and fortunately recognized Jesus for Who He was and is. God’s grace covers us all.

In other teachings, Jesus illustrates that there will be different rewards in Heaven for good works done on earth, but His point in this parable is that salvation is for all who trust in Him. It’s independent of how hard we labor in His service.

God can do whatever He wants with His grace, and we should feel blessed to receive any measure of it. It wouldn’t matter if we were able to trust Christ from inside the womb; we have no claim to any special treatment. That said, if we’ve been privileged to be called to the vineyard early in the day, He expects a full day’s work from us. “From everyone who has been given much…”

Comp-HEART-ments

Teaching kids about their spiritual “heart” is tricky business. Kids are usually quite literal until their teenage years, so it’s easy for them to misunderstand a statement like “ask Jesus into your heart.” I’ve struggled with this for a long time in children’s ministry, but I think I’ve found a way of talking about the heart that they understand.

Your spiritual heart is different from your physical heart. Your physical heart pumps blood throughout your body and keeps you alive. It’s very important. But believe it or not, it’s not quite as important as your spiritual heart.

You can’t actually find your spiritual heart in your body. It’s part of your mind, but no one is really sure what part. Most likely, it’s a combination of parts that work together. In your spiritual heart, you store the things that are most important to you. These can be people, places and things, and each one gets its own special room.

Everyone has a door on the outside of their heart. Sometimes people decide what important things they let into their hearts through this door, but sometimes things force their way in. Anything that is very emotional for us has a way to get past the door to our heart and take over a room on the inside.

More than anything, Jesus wants to come into our hearts, but He will never force his way in. He stands outside and knocks on our door, and even though He is powerful enough to come in without our permission, He always waits to be invited. In the book of Revelation, Jesus says:

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in… (Revelation 3:20)

If we open the door to Him, He comes into the first rooms in our heart, which are the places God reserved for Eternity when He created us.

Every human being was created with these rooms in his or her heart, because God didn’t want us to be satisfied living without Him. Unfortunately, many people don’t ever answer the door when Jesus knocks. Instead, they try to fill these rooms with other things (like money, relationships and things) so that they won’t feel so empty.

But if we do allow Jesus to come into these rooms, the first thing He does is turn on the lights. This gives us hope and excitement for the things Jesus is ready and willing to do in our lives. Often, this leads us to invite Jesus into other rooms, like the one that determines who (or what) we worship.

Once Jesus enters that room, He starts to show us what we’ve been worshipping instead of Him. He starts to “rearrange the furniture” in our rooms. In other words, He evaluates what’s in there and either asks us to get rid of it (if it’s junk) or to put it in the right place (if it’s worth keeping but getting more attention than it deserves).

When those rooms are in pretty good shape, Jesus will knock on doors to other rooms. He never barges in. We have to open the door for Him.

Sometimes opening the doors is very scary for us. We worry about what Jesus will think of us when He sees what we’ve put in the rooms, and we worry that He will make us get rid of some of the things we really, really like. As a result of our fears, we don’t always let Jesus into all our rooms.

We may only let Him into a few rooms at a time, and He might have to do a lot of knocking to get into them. While He stands on the other side of the door, we sometimes have a conversation with Him that goes something like this:

JESUS: “I would like to meet your friends. Will you let me into that room?”

US: “Oh, uh, my friends? Well, some of them aren’t the kind of people you would like very much.”

JESUS: “Really? Why would you think that?”

US: “Well, they use bad language and do things they shouldn’t do sometimes.”

JESUS: “So did you before you let Me into your heart.”

US: “Hmmm… well, that makes sense. Okay, I’ll try to find a good time to introduce You.”

JESUS: “Thanks for introducing me to them. I’ve been knocking on the doors to their hearts for years, but I think they are just now starting to hear Me.”

US: “Yeah, that wasn’t so tough. I’m going to start praying for them every day.”

JESUS: “Say, what about the friends in that other room?”

US: “Oh, I can’t introduce You to them. They hate it when anyone talks about You. They make fun of Christians, and they definitely will make fun of me if they find out I’m one.”

JESUS: “Still, I would really like to meet them, and I wish you weren’t ashamed of Me around them. If they don’t like you because of Me, maybe you should find some other friends. Why don’t you introduce Me, and we’ll see how it turns out?”

US: “Okay, but that scares me to death. Please give me courage.”

US: “That wasn’t easy, but I can see now how those friends were hurting my spiritual growth. I’m glad I let You in that room.”

JESUS: “Keep praying for them. I’ve got plans for their lives, too. You’ve taken a really big step by opening that room to Me. Now let’s talk about all these other places you could open up.”

And the conversation continues, Jesus knocking, us choosing whether or not to respond to His knock. Sometimes we have a major spiritual breakthrough and start throwing many doors open to Jesus. We let Him into our family relationships, our crushes and dating relationships, how we spend our free time, how we spend our money, our habits, the things we desire for ourselves and others…

Jesus sanctifies each room (that’s a big word that means setting something aside for God). He claims each room for His purposes and begins to show us His will for those things that are so important to us. Sometimes He completely empties a room and replaces what was in it with something better, like when He introduces us to new people and helps us care for them or like when He shows us the ministry where He wants us to use our time, talents and treasure.

Room-by-room, Jesus brings light to our heart. He will go anywhere we invite Him, but He knows that some rooms will take more time for us to open. The rooms that hold our Fears, Disappointments, Hates and Hurts are particularly difficult. We didn’t invite these things; they forced their way in and claimed rooms in the deepest, darkest corners of our heart. Over the years, they have become strongholds for Satan. He uses them as his bases of operation as he leads us into sin and prevents us from becoming all that God wants us to be.

It takes incredible courage to open the doors of these rooms to Jesus. Each one is filled with so much fear and pain that the doors can only open a fraction at first. If our courage fails us, we slam them shut again, but if we release these rooms to Jesus, He enters boldly, throws the light switch and evicts the Enemy!

In the light, Jesus shows us the lies that Satan has been telling us about these rooms while we were too afraid to open them and inspect them carefully. Under His loving care, we begin to see how we can turn these Fears, Disappointments, Hates and Hurts into New Hope, New Acceptance, New Love and New Strength.

Jesus is patient, but He isn’t satisfied with only part of our heart.  He’ll keep knocking until we open every door to every room.  He’s persistent with a purpose.  Jesus wants us to know that those things we don’t release to Him end up owning us.  They lead to unhappiness and failure, and they give Satan a hold on our hearts.  It’s only the heart completely open to God that can fully shine His light.

Walking Them Down the Aisle

My daughter is going through a crisis of belief. She’s eleven, and she made her decision for Christ a few years back. But now she’s in a new environment, and her new peer group isn’t buying the “Bible as the inerrant Word of God” stuff. At recess, they ridicule the stories from the Bible that their teacher reads to them each morning, and this has caused my daughter to wonder if what Mom and Dad said about God is really true.

This has given me some worry and anxiety over the years. “Years,” because while I knew this day was coming, I’ve had no idea what to do about it. However, this week, I was introduced to the work of an author named John Westerhoff, who has written a book called, Will Our Children Have Faith? In it, he talks about the four stages of faith. They are:

1. Apprehension rather than comprehension
2. Identification with the faith of their parents or peers
3. Questioning, doubt, searching and experimentation
4. Owned faith

Children first apprehend that there is a loving God before they understand much about Him. We could make a pretty strong case that they are born with a sense of the spiritual. Young children typically just accept it when we tell them there is an all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere God. The doubts come later, but at this stage, they take this information at face value.

A stage of identification with the faith of their parents or peers follows. If they trust us, they will trust our God. They will model our spiritual walk through prayers and church attendance. If we are focused, we can teach them many good spiritual disciplines during this time that will lay a solid foundation for the questioning stage that comes next.

This next stage of questioning and doubt can be scary. It’s a time when children have a literal crisis of belief. (This is where my daughter is right now.) With time, support and searching, this questioning and doubt can lead to ownership of their faith, and an often powerful realization of God’s love and plan for their lives. In the final stage, the child is like those brought to Christ by the Samaritan woman at the well, who said, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”

God gave me a metaphor to help me explain to my daughter what she was going through. I reminded her of the times we had talked about her wedding day and asked her if she remembered my role. She did. I’m to be with her when she starts her march down the aisle, and arm-in-arm, we will slowly make our way to the front. Up to that point, I have all the responsibility for leading her there. I’m the most important man in her life. But once we reach the front, I give her to her husband, who will then become the most important man in her life.

Right now, I’m also the most important man in my daughter’s spiritual life. She looks to me to find out what to believe and how to express her faith. She trusts Jesus largely because she trusts me and believes what I’ve told her about Him. But there is coming a day very soon when it will be time for me to give her to the new, most important man in her spiritual life, and that’s Jesus. She can’t always have me in the picture, because she needs to develop a personal relationship with Him.

I’ve had the joy and the privilege of “walking her down the aisle” of faith. And somewhat like a new bride, my daughter is nervous and having her doubts before making such a big commitment. And even after she has moved to the ownership stage, my role won’t be done. I will still need to model my faith, to answer her questions, to ease her doubts, to provide advice. Just because I’m moving to the position of the #2 man in her life doesn’t mean I’ll ever stop being her dad.

Man-na?

The Israelites had been miraculously freed from their captivity in Egypt, but their food ran out in the desert, and they were feeling a little grumpy. “If we were still in Egypt, we would have food to eat! Did you bring us out here to die?” they demanded from Moses. Moses, in turn, complained to God, “What am I going to do with these people you gave me?”

God agreed to send the Israelites bread (a.k.a., “manna”) from heaven each day, and He made good on His promise for 40 years while the they wandered through the desert. (Lesson #1: Be careful what you ask for. There’s only so much you can make from one ingredient breakfast, lunch and dinner. When manna got old, they learned to make manna-cotti, manna-lla wafers, and salad with manna-goes, but it was a few years before the first MannacDonalds.)

But when the Israelites first saw the bread, they had no idea what it was. They asked each other, “Man-na?” (Hence, the name.) Translated, the question is, “What is it?” Even though God had told them that He was sending them bread… Even though He had told them when it was coming, they still were surprised by its arrival.

Fast forward almost fifteen hundred years. Jesus had just fed the 5,000 and walked on water. The Jews met him on the other side of the lake, and their appetite for miracles had been whetted. “Show us a miracle!” they demanded. “Moses gave our forefathers manna in the desert.”

Jesus replied, “I am the living bread that has come down from heaven. If you eat this bread, you will live forever.” Of course, he was speaking spiritually, not physically, but they didn’t get it. They thought Jesus was a prophet, maybe Elijah or Jeremiah or John the Baptist returned from the dead. They were offended that He would say that they should eat His flesh, and many of them turned away.

In a very real sense, they were still saying, “Man-na?” “What is this?”  Even though God had told them that He was sending them a Savior… Even though He had told them whose family line He would come from…  Even though He had told them when and where and how, they still were surprised by His arrival.

“Man-na?” It’s the single, most important question any of us will ever answer in regard to Jesus. What do we make of Him? Is He prophet, philosopher, teacher, nice-guy? Or is He God? Will we be satisfied with His miracles, or will we not be satisfied until we have a relationship with the Miracle-Maker? We can’t just choose not to deal with the question. Not dealing with it is an answer in itself. Jesus is the Bread of Life. Nothing else can satisfy our spiritual hunger.

The Covering

My eight-year-old is a theological scholar – to me, at least. We were out on the town for a “Boys’ Night Out” last night and dipping deep into the spiritual well of the story of Adam and Eve. I was asking him some questions to make sure he had really read the passage he claimed to have read earlier that day, and I thought I would throw him a few that troubled me some.

“If God knows everything, then why did He ask Adam where he was?” (Me)

“Maybe because He wanted to see if he would tell the truth.” (Him)

“Hmmm…okay, that’s an interesting thought. But why did it bother Adam and Eve that they were naked? I mean, they were naked before, and it was no big deal.” (Me)

“Maybe it’s because their hearts were naked.” (Him)

The truth of what he said struck me. Their hearts were naked! That made more sense. So we continued to talk through the idea that your heart could be naked, that an uncovered, sinful heart before a righteous God was a dangerous thing that invited judgment. And before dinner was over, we had developed a pretty good exposition of the text. Here’s what we came up with.

Adam and Eve were created with God’s spiritual covering, but when they ate from the Tree, they stepped out from under it. Immediately, they realized they were naked, but it wasn’t physical nakedness that caused them shame; it was their spiritual nakedness. Never having experienced this before, they focused on their physical exposure and fashioned their own covering out of fig leaves. (Not a good choice, as it happens. Fig leaves are terribly itchy.) That sort of addressed the physical need but totally missed the spiritual.

God came walking through the garden and asked Adam where he was. It wasn’t a physical question; it was spiritual. “Where is your heart?” Of course God knew the answer, but He was giving Adam an opportunity to step up and play the man. Instead, Adam complained of his nakedness and then set about blaming his wife. In the words of a popular blog site – that’s an Accountability Fail.

God shared the new rules with Adam and Eve. That’s “rules” – plural. Because they couldn’t live with just one rule, they now had to live with many – and these first rules were just the beginning. Later would come Exodus and Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Once we got the hang of it, we started writing our own books about even more rules. (My wife is a rules person – she would understand.)

But God is gracious and merciful. He replaced the itchy fig leaves with “garments of skin” before sending Adam and Eve out of the Garden for their own protection (because, if they had eaten from the Tree of Life, they would have lived forever in their fallen state).

Here’s the beauty and efficiency of what God did. By providing the garments of skin, He covered not only their physical but also their spiritual nakedness.  And with the same gesture, He trained them on how they could cover themselves in the future.  The blood of the animal sacrifice provided the spiritual covering, and their hearts were no longer naked.

How did animal blood provide a covering? Scripture says that “the wages of sin is death.” That means that the penalty for sinning is death – spiritual death in our relationship with God and eventually physical death of our bodies. The penalty has to be paid, and only someone/something that doesn’t have a debt of his/its own can pay it. Animals are innocent of sin, since they have no free will, so they can serve as our substitute. Their death, their blood covers our sin.

Unfortunately for Adam and Eve, it was only a temporary fix. Animal blood had a short shelf-life as a covering for their sins, so they had to repeat the sacrifices over and over to keep their naked hearts covered.

Fast forward several thousand years. Jesus, the Christ, enters the physical world as a baby and lives a life completely free of sin. For the first time in history, a man without a sin debt has walked among us. He alone is qualified to pay what we owe. And this payment is eternal. The blood of Jesus is so powerful that it covers every sin ever committed by any person. It covers every sin that ever would be committed. It’s a one-time payment in full to the one who has a lien on our spiritual property – his name is Satan.

There’s only one catch.  Jesus has provided the covering, but we have to choose for ourselves to come under it.  He won’t force us.  If He did, He would destroy free will, and a choice that is compelled is no choice at all.

Ironically, the covering is big enough for everyone who has ever lived, but few of us will choose to take advantage of it.  Instead, we’ll try our best to cover our spiritual nakedness with money, accomplishments, love, sex, fame, entertainment, drugs or other religions….anything to make us feel less exposed in front of a righteous God.  But though they provide temporary relief, they are just fig leaves with different names, and in the end, they will cause us more discomfort than they are worth.

There’s only one Covering that covers both our physical needs and our spiritual ones.  Won’t you come under it today?