All strung out

My dog, Cooper, loves to play. He has a basket full of toys in the living room behind the recliner. Every night around 9:00 he gets a second wind and bounces around the living room, flinging his toys around. We play catch, fetch and all that. He's a riot.

Tonight I wasn't paying much attention to him because I was busy doing something else. I heard him growling and jumping around, fulfilling his nightly ritual. I happened to look over, and much to my dismay he wasn't flinging his toy around--instead a big ball of string! I don't know where he found it. I didn't even know I had a big ball of string.

He had flung that thing around so much that the string had begun to unwind. Before I could stop him, he was completely tangled up. He had string wrapped around his legs, head, body and around several pieces of furniture. It took me forever to get him untangled.

So many times he does things that God uses to teach me. Tonight while he was "strung out," he was as happy and oblivious as can be. Isn't that how we are with sin sometimes? Giving no thought to what we're doing. Living in the moment. Completely caught up in the pleasure of it all. Meanwhile, the very sin we revel in is slowly closing in on us. Before long, we are paralyzed and completely consumed by it. And it doesn't take long.

Although God forgives us, it may take a lot of time to undo what sin has done to us. Just because God takes away the guilt, he doesn't always take away the consequences. If I were to put that ball of string back on the floor right now, Cooper would be right back on top of it. Ready for round 2. It didn't really cost him anything to get out of that mess. I took care of it for him. So he didn't learn anything.

Maybe I need to tie some of that string somewhere I'll see it. Maybe it will serve to remind me how quickly I can get into a big ol' mess when sin comes creepin' in.