Shade Tree Wisdom 8/16/08

Recently the city council of a suburb near Houston adopted a public profanity law. So an assistant fire marshal, in uniform, was shopping when he heard a woman, finding a shelf empty, expressed her displeasure with a string of profanity. He admonished her, and was met with another outburst. So he escorted her from the store to his vehicle, handcuffed her, found his citation book, and wrote her a citation for breaking that law, and released her. The outcome I know not.

But it does remind me of the unintended consequences of our actions. Such speech seems nearly normal, and leads me to ask, “What is sin?” Luther’s small catechism gives this answer: “Any act against the ten commands in thoughts, desires, word, or deeds.” The Bible does teach, “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” [Romans 3,23]

So how identify it in my life? Luther offers this: “Consider your place according to the Ten Commandments; Are you father, mother, son, daughter, husband, wife, or worker? Have you been disobedient, unfaithful, lazy? Have you been hot-tempered, rude, or quarrelsome? Have you hurt someone by your words or deeds? Have you stolen? Been negligent, wasted anything, or done any harm”? That’s a fine blueprint to help us zero in.

Spring housecleaning usually meant that the house really got turned up-side-down. Every corner was scrubbed, every curtain laundered, every window washed, every rug beaten. The result was the satisfaction the housewife had that the house was CLEAN (I guess nowadays Roomba does it).

But the words I quoted above do give us one way to identify sins. We live in an environment where speech tends to be more casual, and hence more crude. Maybe we have developed some habits that we are not even aware of. Something like that lady mentioned in the incident above. And when we look, really look, at habits we picked up along the way, it is time to assess their value.

St. Paul sums it up nicely for us when he writes to the Christians at Ephesus, “Wherefore, putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another’. [Eph. 4,25].

Housecleaning wasn’t done lightly. It meant work, effort, attention to detail, getting into dark corners, but it really made that house more livable and sound. If not now, then when? Tend to your daily life with some attention, using the Light of the Word to root out the bad, allow the good that the Spirit plants in your heart to flourish and produce good fruit.

GPD 8/16/08