Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Called back from the brink of disaster

Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live (Isaiah 55:3).

The St. Louis Zoo had just opened "Big Cat Country," which allowed tigers and lions to come out of their cages and roam in a large enclosure. Visitors could observe them from an elevated skyway above their habitat. A mother with small children was walking up one of the skyways when a blanket got caught in the wheel of her stroller. The mother stopped to untangle it while her sons, ages three and five, went ahead. When she was ready to move on, she looked for the boys and discovered to her horror that they had innocently walked through a small gap in the fence and had climbed up on some rocks towering 20 feet above the lion pen. They had been told that they would be able to look down on the lions, and they were doing just that from their hazardous vantage point. Pointing to the lions, they called back to their mother, "Hey, Mom, we can see them."

The boys had no concept of how much danger they were in. The mother saw it immediately, but what could she do? The gap in the fence was too small for her to get through. If she screamed, the boys might panic and slip off the rock. So she knelt down, spread out her arms and said, "Boys, come get a hug." And they came running.

In the Lord’s Prayer we say "forgive us our trespasses." To trespass is to go through a fence that was designed to keep us out. God put fences in our lives to protect us from danger. His fences are the Ten Commandments, and they were designed to protect us from falling into the pit of hell where the devil prowls like a roaring lion, waiting to tear at us for all eternity. We squirm through God’s fence when we ignore Him, when we show disrespect to those who are in authority, when we act in anger, when we indulge in sex outside of marriage, when we cheat on our tax returns, when we participate in gossip, when we waste all our money on things to make us feel good. When we act in these ways we become trespassers, people who foolishly wander into dangerous situations we do not fully comprehend or appreciate.

But Jesus calls us back to the safety of His arms. His arms stretched wide for us on the cross where they bled because of His love for us, a love that would endure anything to save us from the danger our foolish trespassing has placed us in. Jesus calls us back from the edge of a terrifying drop into hell; He calls each of us by name, offering us the security of his love.

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