A surgeon treating a woman with breast cancer cuts out a whole lump of tissue, or the entire breast, not just the small lump of definite cancer. Less than 20% of each board that I pulled out was rotted, but the whole board had to go. Rottenness is ugly, offending our senses with its destruction.Rottenness makes us weak, unable to do things that we should do, or even want to do. The rottenness caused by sin in our lives will only grow if we ignore it, and its effects will get worse: But the problem would have become much bigger – perhaps having to replace the whole deck and dealing with an injury. I could have ignored the rot, for a while, until visible holes developed or someone fell partly or completely through the deck. My first thought on finding the rot was, “Oh no, another thing to do.” I mentally rearranged my time to make space for shopping for supplies, pulling the old boards, cutting new ones, installing the planks, and doing the preventive maintenance that follows. What happens if you don’t deal with rotten wood? We can no longer deny the smell, nor can anyone else. Throw in some pressure: a fight with our spouse, a poor evaluation at work, an illness, or worse, and the rot in our souls stinks like a festering sore. As long as our thoughts don’t become actions that others might notice, or our actions remain hidden, the rot can hide. Since they are only thoughts, no one else notices, and we feel free to follow them down the dark corridors of our sinful nature. Our thoughts too often go a wrong direction, perhaps lust or worry or pride. We all have areas of rottenness in our lives. Only when I put pressure on the board did the rot show itself. Little by little the wood grew weaker, though it looked fine from the top, until finally it buckled under my step. Judging by the size, the rotten area in my deck had been there for months. Work is inherently good, but working to the exclusion of family, friends, church, and the other parts of life is rotten. Television and video games may not be inherently bad, but hours of one or both per day, displacing our quiet times of Bible reading and study, or our quieter times of sleep, become sin and produce rottenness. Too often, however, rottenness comes from too much of good things in wrong times and places. Rottenness in our lives can result from bad things that we do – obvious sins like stealing, extramarital sex, violence, abuse – which might be similar to pouring acid on a wooden deck or lighting it on fire. But too much of this good thing, water, in the wrong place, one small section of my deck, rotted the wood and produced a hazard to me and my family. Water on the deck is a good thing necessary to keep the deck clean. Water is a good thing a gift of God which is the basis of life. While working on the deck, and lying in bed thinking about it, I recognized many parallels between rotten wood and sin in our lives. There was a leak in the gutter above the rotten spots, and I recalled seeing a nearly continuous stream of water hitting this part of the deck during several rainstorms over the past several months. In total, only five boards needed to be replaced, all touching each other in the same part of the deck. “Ugh” I thought, and began to check the rest of the deck for rotten spots. I pushed a little harder with my heel and the wood collapsed, leaving a hole in the deck, and exposing the dirt several feet below. The wooden plank on the deck gave a soft “squish” as I stepped down. How to eliminate rotten wood – the thoughts, word, and actions that drag you down, whether they seem big or small – in your life.
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