Every morning (early morning) my 3 year old, Lael, wakes up rather upset that she is not in bed with mommy and daddy.
So she finds her way to our room and climbs into bed between Kim and I.
Mira quickly follows suit, but I have to get up and bring her into our bed since she is in her crib.
This morning was no different.
Much like every morning after our sanctuary of sleep is infiltrated by the toddler squad, the troops got hungry.
Lael, in her advanced years, can be told to go to the fridge and get some type of fruit for her and her cohort that will hold them over until the wife and I decide to climb through the immensities of our sleepy-headedness.
So, yesterday after Lael left to the kitchen to retrieve some sustenance, we heard something odd.
Much more calm than either my wife or I would have expected, Lael stated, “Daddy, there’s a bird in the house.”
Grogginess can be deceiving at times, so I asked for an explanation: “What!?”
“There’s a bird in the house.”
Trying to get as much information with as little effort as possible I sat up and asked, “Where in the house?”
Lael, clearly not perturbed by the feathered intruder, makes us aware that the bird is, in fact, in the kitchen.
So I get up, arm myself with a broom and prepare for this undeniably epic confrontation.
As I walk into the kitchen, the bird, resembling some type of sparrow and terrified by my very presence, flies around the corner and into the bathroom.
Since the bathroom is directly across from the back door, I think and hope that if I open the back door, the little birdie will leave our nest and fly away.
That is not so much the case.
Despite the fact that there is sunlight pouring in from the doorway and with it the hope of freedom, the bird deems it better to smack itself repeatedly into the bathroom mirror, the shower door and the frosted bathroom window.
There is clearly a way to freedom; clearly a way out of this lavatory prison; clearly a way not to be trapped.
Yet he doesn’t see it.
Or maybe he does and it looks too obvious.
Whatever the case, equipped with my broom and a tad bit of resolve, I start beating walls and making a racket enough to finally force the little guy to erratically fly out of the bathroom and into the daylight.
Despite what accounts you may hear, I did not by any means, scream like a girl when this tiny, harmless sparrow fluttered past my head with wings all ablaze.
I stood firm and unrelenting.
Eh hem.
Does this bird not resemble us?
How often do we find ourselves entrenched in sin and struggling to escape its jaws only to realize that the ability to flee is ours?
As Paul insists of Timothy, “But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.” (1 Timothy 6:11).
God obviously wants us to pursue a life that is pleasing to Him; that is filled with His joy for us and what He desires for us.
Yet, time and again, you and I find ourselves intertwined in sin that seems too difficult to escape.
1 Corinthians 10:13 tells us that “The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.”
God is faithful to show us a way out, but so often we would much rather throw our bodies against a mirror, wall or window repeatedly instead of seeing what it is that God has for us.
Even if there was a humongous bright light with a neon sign saying “THIS WAY!” we find it so easy to say, “I can’t see the way out”.
Often times God will have to make a ruckus in our lives with his proverbial broom just to get our attention.
When, in reality, all we really need to do to flee from sin is walk away, turn the computer off, stop talking, or put the phone down.
I’m not going to pretend that overcoming our desire to sin is easy or even possible, but I will say that the opportunity to prevail over the bindings and trappings of sin are there.
Sometimes you need to search for them, but often times the door is open and you simply need to walk through it.
When we struggle we should seek God, yet I know how difficult it can be to pursue what seems to be the cause of our shame.
When in actuality our shame is not directly from God, it is from our own brokenness and understanding of our depravity.
It’s almost as if we got stuck with our hand in the cookie jar, realized we had a problem with overeating and then went to our parent with crumbs on our face asking for help.
It hurts to need someone’s help.
It feels good to sin.
So obviously we are much more inclined to sin than we are to seek God.
This is the human dilemma.
How can we, when entrenched in sin, find our way out?
