Can’t See the Fire for the Smoke

Driving down our fantastically ornamented road in fantastically ornamented New Zealand, I was pondering a few things. Three in particular:

1. I really do have an identical twin, and he happens to play the keyboard for Jesus Culture. Don’t believe me? Check the clip once you [read and] get to the bottom of this post and watch out for the amazingly handsome keyboardist.
2. The invisible attributes of my Creator are clearly seen all around me. Everywhere, everyday. You just have to be looking.
3. The hazy cloud I was driving through and smelling was not a light fog, but the unmistakably heavy feel and acrid stench of smoke from a bonfire.

It suddenly occurred to me — yes, whilst driving and contemplating my identical twin — that metaphorically, Christians are surrounded by varying intensities of putrid and sinful smoke every day: the vomit of sin and death. To this day, the choice that remains for us is whether or not to inhale, how much to inhale, or how deeply we allow the inhaling to go into our lungs. Sure, you’re compulsorily around the smoke every day — and that is not a bad thing — but if you surround yourself with nothing but smoky air and a roomful of smokers all the time, you only end up growing desensitised to the habits that cause the desire to smoke in the first place, and not really caring that your spirit is getting clouded, and confused bogged down instead of being built up and sustained on the infallible Word of God.

Not to mention you can seriously damage your lungs and breathing capacity if you rarely have the balance of the fresh air of the Holy Spirit: say, only on church days perhaps? Heck, if you aren’t careful, you may even get prone to the idea of trying that appealing looking addiction for yourself.

The question I had to ask myself while driving through a screen of undulating putrid smells was thus: Where are you investing the majority of your spare time? Wrapped up in the adoring arms of God; or in the thorny arms of the cares and unbelief of this world?

Can’t seem to see God in anything you do? Maybe the smoke is clouding your vision. Maybe, just maybe, it isn’t actually possible to see something or someone you never spend time around.

When Jesus came to Simon Peter, Peter said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
Jesus replied, “You don’t understand now what I am doing, but someday you will.” “No,”
Peter protested, “you will never ever wash my feet!”
Jesus replied, “Unless I wash you, you wont belong to me.”
Simon Peter exclaimed, “Then wash my hands and head as well, Lord, not just my feet!”
Jesus replied, “A person who has bathed all over does not need to wash, except for the feet, to be entirely clean.”

- John 13:4-10

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