Remarks From The Peanut Gallery

As I was driving to the office yesterday I had to chuckle to myself. Waiting patiently for the stop light to turn green I decided to "make the most of my time" by making up stories about people in the cars next to me. In the car on my left was a young man smoking a cigarette. So the story in my head went something like this: When the light turned green and he accelerated and the cigarette he was smoking slipped from his hand and landed on his leg. It not only burnt a hole in his pants but also left a pretty nasty burn on his leg. Not wanting to be in pain all day he drove to the nearest walk in clinic to get some burn cream. Little did he know that he would meet the woman of his dreams, Pam. Pam was in the healthcare profession so he decided to quit smoking and they lived happily ever after. In the car on my right was an older lady named Kathryn who (in my mind) had just left the hospital where she watched her 6th great-granddaughter be born. New granddaughter's name...Kathryn Louise. Ok you get the picture. So I am sitting there making up stories when I notice a man standing on his driveway blowing packing peanuts, you know those little Styrofoam things, off of his driveway and into the street with a leaf blower. I am not sure how they ended up there, but there were quite a few...more than 25 and less than 3,000. Needless to say it looked as if it were snowing very large blue flakes. I was impressed by his skill with the blower. He worked from one side of the driveway to the other blowing them just a few feet at a time. As he approached the end of his driveway a question crossed my mind. What was he going to do when he got them all out to the street? Well my question was quickly answered. As the last one made it's way into the middle of what was now looking like a small blue pond in the middle of the road the man reached down flipped the switch to turn the blower off and turned his back. "What?" I mumbled to myself. "You are just going to leave them there? Out in the middle of the road like that? You have got to be kidding?" Then I witnessed, with a great amount of joy I might add, how at times there are somethings that seem to come back and haunt us. As the man walked back up his drive with his back turned a gust of wind kicked up. Not a kind of wind that signifies a storm is on it's way but the kind of wind that is almost unnoticeable. Well in most cases that is. You see when that slight breeze kicked up those blue Styrofoam peanuts took flight. First it was just a few and then as if the few gave permission to all the others, they all skated on the wind together. You wouldn't believe it but they skated right up onto the man who was toting his blower up to the lawn. There he stood on his nice clean driveway looking at the sea of blue that now covered where green grass used to be. Of course this all happened very quickly and just about the time I was going to make up a story for it God spoke. "These peanuts that you see represent sin that lives in your life. Because you are not willing to do the work to remove them but instead try to blow them off I have no choice but to blow them right back in your face. You are so worried at what people might see when they look your way that you use the fastest easiest way possible to remove undesirable items from the front yard. Those things will continue to pop up, or in this case fly in, because they are not really gone they are sitting just outside of who you are. Kim if you will do the work to remove those pesky peanuts, not just blow them off, you will find that your yard will stay much cleaner. " There was my story. It had nothing to do with the people in the cars next to me, or even the man holding the blower. It had to do with me. I don't just want to blow off my sin as if they will just rest comfortably outside my front yard. I want to remove them and remove them I will. With God's help I will bend down, pick them up one by one and offer them to the one who can truly dispose of them.
Thank you Jesus that you don't mind helping me pick-up my trash and then haul it away!