We have been blessed with plenty of rain in the past couple of weeks. I say blessed, and I mean it because we have been in a drought for some time. I live a mile down a dirt road that was becoming very dusty! The financial struggles my family has been facing have taken their toll on that dirt road and my driveway. The road is riddled with pot holes and my driveway hasn't seen a load of gravel for many years. We have known for some time that we were going to have to get gravel and do some maintenance soon, but my return to college to obtain my teaching license has put some things, like gravel, on hold. So, the once hard and dusty road is now the muddy and wet road. The pot holes are now large mud puddles that have overspilled their boundaries as if reaching out for one another. I used to take solice in the the fact that the road was a mess, but my drive and the place where I parked my car remained mud free. I used to. I'm not sure the day that it happend. I'm sure it happened over the course of time, but it seemed to have happened overnight! The gravel that was there has been swallowed up by the newly softened ground and in its place is water and mud, some of which fell off of the bottom of my daughter's truck because she, unlike me, takes great joy in the newly created mud that is all around us. As I carefully walked out to my car to go to church Sunday, I began to think about the mud. I had to pull down to the barn to check on my daughter's baby horse (some kids bring home orphan dogs...mine brought home an orphan horse), I began to wish that I had a good pair of muddy boots. The kind that keep your feet warm and dry on the inside no matter how muddy they get, and you just spray them off with the hose before you go into the house. As I was driving to church thankful that I had managed to somehow keep my shoes from being covered in the mud, I realized that sin in our lives is a lot like that mud. The longer that we stay away from God's word and His people, the dustier our spiritual road becomes. The dust is an aggravation, but it really doesn't bog us down the way that mud does. God loves us, so He sends some rain to wash the dust away. Sometimes that shot of rain is all we need to motivate us to get some gravel and start filling in the pot holes. We know that we need to make repairs before the storm comes because we know that, eventually, the storm will come. Sometimes, however, we keep pushing the pot holes to the end of our "to do" list. The sin that was just an aggravation grows into an all-consuming monster with a life of its own.
I don't know where you are on your spiritual road right now. You may have made it on up to the pavement and dusty roads are a thing of the past! If you have, please take time to look around you. Take a trip down a dusty road or jump into the mud to help a friend or a stranger that God puts into your path. You didn't make it just to be able to say you made it. You made it so that you could look a hurting soul in the eye and tell them that you know they will make it because you have been in their shoes and you made it and you will help them make it too! Some of you may just be starting to become aggravated with all of the dust and the pot holes. Take time before the next storm to fill in the pot holes and clean out the ditches! If you don't know where to begin, ask God. He will either tell you what to do or put someone in your life who will. Some of you may have just realized that you're in mud up to your kness! It didn't happen overnight, but, just like that mud in my parking space, you wake up one day and are struggling to even pick your feet up because the mud and the muck are weighing you down. In fact, when you finally manage to pick one leg up, you realize that your cute little sneaker is still lost in the mud! Don't dispair! You are not alone in this mud hole! Reach out and reach up to take the hand of God! He may pick you up and sit you down on the other side of the mud; I hope he does. He may, however, give you a good pair of muddy boots (a friend or a word from Him), take your hand and lead you right on thru the mud and the mess so that you learn valuable life lessons that will enable you to help others on down the road. Either way, God is not going to let you go! The rain will stop, the sun will come out and, eventually, the mud will dry up and become hard ground that you can stand upon!
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