A few weeks ago, my daughter and son-in-law had an adventure with a skunk on their new acreage outside of Dallas, TX. The story is hilarious, though not germane, so suffice to say a skunk was killed, but not before leaving ample cause to remember his presence. The carcass was carried to the other side of their property and dumped.
End of story. Or not.
As we visit the Looneys, tonight Donna was looking out the sliding doors to the back of their house. She saw their two new dogs (still puppies, though good sized ones) playing with (chewing, gnawing, rubbing, tossing…) something just outside the door.
It looked amazingly like a skunk.
When Ty came home, he had a job. He took the carcass away (don’t know where) and had to bathe the dogs. I don’t doubt they smell better than they did, but you can still tell.
As always, my mind takes things like this and goes somewhere else. After getting over my irritation that these dogs exist (yes, I was ok with the skunk, just not the dogs) I started to think. How often does God show us something particularly smelly (STINKY my granddaughter would say) in our life? And when we respond faithfully and remove it–how far do we remove it?
Isn’t it strange that sometimes we keep that smelly part of our life close enough to see if we go for a walk in our backyard? And then there’s the reality that when we keep that smelly part of our past close, someone, or something always seems to bring it back to us.
Do we like the smell of sin?
Do we see the carcass of our own failures as fascinating–something we want to keep around?
Do we fear others will think us extreme for distancing ourselves from our skunks?
I don’t know. I do know that the farther away I get from my stinky sin, the less likely I’m going to experience that particular stink again.
Thanks for reading. Know Jesus, and Be Faithful.
