Plunket rulz. They provide free support and healthcare for
mothers and their young children. It is
an amazing organization. Recently Plunket
and the NZ Fire Service teamed up to put a smoke alarm in every new parent’s home
for free. Pretty good deal I thought! So a month after having my second child I
called up and a few days later three very nice firemen turned up (in a fire
engine!) and installed not one, but two brand new smoke alarms in my home. They were super nice guys, so helpful and
friendly and didn’t say a word to me about my poor fire safe practices. But still I found myself showing them around the
house making endless excuses for the fact that our smoke alarms were old,
broken or non-existent. There was a hole
in the ceiling where one had been at the top of the stairs, the two in the
bedrooms were out of date and hadn’t been tested and the one downstairs didn’t
have the bracket to fix it to the ceiling and was resting against the wall on a
top shelf. Sound familiar?
We are useless. I mean, how many times have the Fire Service
put advertisements on TV, which I have seen, saying that smoke alarms are a
very important thing to have in your home?
The advertisements showed me in graphic imagery that smoke alarms save
lives, they stop your children getting hurt etc. etc and yet it was not enough
to make me do anything about it. Then
here come these nice firemen (did I mention they were nice?) and didn’t say a
word to me about how useless I was for listening to, but not doing, what their advertisements were trying to get me
to do. They should have read me the riot
act, but they didn’t and I should have felt relieved, but I didn’t – I just
felt more and more guilty.
Well that’s kind of the way it is with us
and God really. We know what his law
demands from us; it’s written on our hearts! Meaning that we instinctively know right from wrong and feel guilty when we do wrong. Every time we hurt our neighbour in some way, by gossiping about them or not meeting their needs, or being angry or bitter toward them, we break God’s law. Every time we demand life goes exactly the
way we planned it and when it doesn’t we seethe with fury (thereby acting like
we should be God) we break God’s law.
Feeling guilty yet? But when God
comes to us and says “you are forgiven of all your sin because my son, my only son, took your punishment upon himself and paid your debt and now you are my beloved child whom I will never turn away” we still feel guilty! Just like I did when those nice firemen
treated me with grace and compassion.
The job of the church is pretty similar to
that of the Fire Service really: To
tell people what they have done wrong then to save them from themselves. The first few times we go to church we still
feel guilty after hearing God’s love for us but gradually, Sunday by Sunday,
the Holy Spirit [God] will do his good work in our broken hearts and will
slowly free us from our lingering doubts and guilts. We will learn to trust God’s promises to us;
that despite our sin and unbelief, God still loves us and keeps us safe for all
eternity. He loves rebels and losers and
outsiders and will bring them into his kingdom to feast with him forever
because of his son’s work for us in his death and resurrection. Smoke alarms save lives and Jesus saves
sinners.AIM pt 1: You will be saved through childbearing
AIM pt 2: I'm sorry, I just don't remember your name
AIM pt 3: In memory of summers past
AIM pt 4: Blowing the lid on Santa
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