Impure

For those of you who don’t know, the great state of Texas has been operating in drought mode for almost all of the summer. Since water is a scarcity, the city municipal water systems are literally dragging the bottom of lakes to produce water for the cities. As a result, the color and taste of the water in our house has taken a pretty bad turn. After a week of foul-smelling water and limp hair we called a water specialist to test our tap water and make recommendations. To give contrast, the specialist took some of our bottled water from the fridge to undergo the same tests and help establish a baseline. We were shocked with the results, to say the least. What shocked us weren’t really the results of the tests because anyone with a taste bud could tell you the water was not good, but the fact that the technician was surprised they weren’t worse. When we sat down to look at the results of the tests he shared with us, he was surprised because the percentages were only slightly worse than they normally were in our city. So essentially, while the results were pretty bad in comparison to other cities they weren’t that much different than what we were used to drinking. Ick.

It really is scary to think how quickly we can become immune to imperfection and calloused to impurities so that we don’t even notice the filth that we are ‘bathing in’. A few months ago my brother and I had a deep conversation about sin and temptation and he shared with me a lesson we could all stand to learn. He explained that once he was on his own in college he realized that as he tried to practice tolerance of other people’s sins he found that he was becoming more sinful. He explained he had really begun to understand what Jesus was talking about when he said, “Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” and that he realized that the concept was true with any sinful behavior. “I never realized that as soon as I was ok with it my mind was ok with my friends doing sinful things I was essentially taking the first step to heading down that same pathway.” Such wise words from someone only beginning his adulthood.

But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
Matthew 5:28-29

Your thoughts?