The Pin-Sized Hole
A number of years ago we had an inground swimming pool at the house we lived in at the time. One summer the vinyl liner began to leak due to a small pin-sized hole. At first, the leak was small and undetectable. Soon we were losing enough water that we knew there was a leak. We put a patch over the hole and for a number of months the leak was minimal. Slowly the hole in the liner grew bigger and bigger until eventually the pool lost almost all of its 28,000 gallons of water. The following spring, we had to replace the entire liner. What started as a small hole slowly grew to become a bigger hole, and finally, a hole too big to fix.
That pool liner leak often describes our lives. We begin to neglect “little” things (behaviors, attitudes, habits, etc.), or we find ourselves in “little” sins, and over time if we do not make changes to those attitudes or actions, they become “big” things, and we wonder what happened.
What I am referring to can be called “drift.” It is that slow migration from good into not so good, little by little, often without really noticing, until the pin-sized leak becomes a gaping hole. We drift in many areas of our lives, and we rarely, if ever, drift in a positive way. We naturally drift away from everything holy and everything wholesome. Think about your health, relationships, thoughts, desires, finances – without intentional and committed effort they tend to simply drift, a slow erosion, into something less than what they could be. And how about your relationship with God? That, too, drifts in a negative direction unless you purposely strive to become more like Him.
We need to be checking in with each other and checking on each other. Why? The drift starts in our heart. And nobody knows, unless somebody has access to us. The Bible gives us the prescription to avoid drift. Here is what we read in Hebrews 3:12-13 – “Watch out, brothers and sisters, so that none of you have an evil, unfaithful heart that abandons the living God.Instead, encourage each other every day, as long as it’s called “today,” so that none of you become insensitive to God because of sin’s deception” (CEV).
As Jesus-followers, we are called to encourage and build one another up. We find these words from the apostle Paul – “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11). What if people from all walks of life, from all belief systems, did this? What if we focused on building others up and not tearing each other down? Imagine the positive impact it would have in this polarized environment in which we live.
The Greek verb (parakaleó) in both verses for encourage is not just rah, rah, rah; it means exhort, plead, urge, appeal to. And the word daily literally means day after day after day. It’s an ongoing thing. It’s a relational thing. Jesus used the related Greek noun paraklétos for the Holy Spirit, one who is called alongside to help (John 14:16, 26). Both the noun and verb come from the same two root words: para (beside) and kaleó (call, invite).
In modern day language, we have the word para-medic, whichis someone who comes alongside us to help, having our best interests in mind. Again here, para comes from the Greek for beside, along side of.
So, I ask you today, are you flying solo, or do you have others who can see your pin-sized hole before it becomes so big that your liner must be replaced?
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