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How Easily...

             I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. (I Corinthians 11:2-3)

Have you ever been cheated on? Have you ever cheated on someone? It doesn’t even have to have been a lover. It could have been a friend. Whether or not you have, you’ve probably seen cheating around you or encountered in on TV or in a book. As hard as it is to stomach someone sneaking around, meeting in dim and dingy places to avoid being seen, it must be far harder if the cheater parades around town, displaying infidelity to anyone and everyone - even the one he/she’s cheating on.

Paul is describing cheating of slightly different kind: cheating on Christ. And we may never darken the doors of a temple of Molech or give the slightest credence to astrology, but let me give you a very abbreviated version of my “morning on the town.” My intention when I walk Grace  is to pray then come home and work on this blog. This morning was not atypical. I endured an earworm (I won’t mention the song, but it actually does have to do with cheating), lectured at least one unknown and invisible audience on at least one topic, stole 3 red clover flowers (foraged them without asking because “they’re a weed!”), and quickly lifted up “all the people I should have prayed for.” When I got home, I weeded my neighbor’s garden for a few minutes to collect more lemon balm, then harvested parsley and spinach. I cleaned them and got them drying, and now it’s 8 and I have to be out the door to work by 8:30. I’m trying to get this done.

Taking the red clover was evil. The earworm was evil because it was an earworm, but that might be said to be evil done to me as much as my doing evil. The lecturing was probably evil. The rest could have been good if I’d included God in them, but I was too busy. The point however, isn’t about how evil I am- it’s about how easily and consistently we can be drawn away from God, to cheat with other people, other things, other thoughts, etc.

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