OnFire #161 Some of Life’s Scrapes

Hi Folks:

This week’s OnFire comes courtesy of Jan. She’s been painting and has seen some applications for our Christian life. So the idea for this week’s letter comes from her.

Last week she finished our living room and started the hall, which extends up the stairs to the second level of the house. She spent two days painting the baseboards and trim. Before, they were the same colour as the walls.  Jan changed them to white, and the contrast with the wall was nice.

And then she noticed that the paint scraped off very easily. This was disturbing because she had bought a special paint which was supposed to be tough. Tough it was not. All it took was to drag a fingernail over the surface and the paint disappeared.

Jan took out the little test kit from the hardware store to reveal the type of paint on the baseboards. She had done this earlier on the wall and determined that it was latex paint. Since the colour went from floor to ceiling, it seemed safe to assume there was latex paint everywhere. The test kit told a different story, however.  Latex paint on the wall, with oil paint on the trim work.

At this point, let me take a quick moment to explain that oil paint will stick to latex paint, but latex paint will not stick to oil paint. We were pleased to think it might be latex because clean-up is simple water, but our pleasure has now turned into pain. In order to get paint to stick, Jan must now scrape off that new coat of paint. Already she has spent parts of two days trying to remove it.

After the first day, she said to me, “You know, this is like sin. Its a lot easier to do than it is to undo.”

How true. We can all think of some “scrapes” we’ve been into (pardon the pun) that were much easier to get into than out of. A word spoken in haste. An action done in anger. A moral slip. Something that took but a moment to do took much longer to make right. Sometimes there are lifelong implications, for us or someone else. A friend of mine has said that one of the hardest things to do is to live with the consequences of our sin.

1 Corinthians 10:13 says, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” (NIV)

Our painting misadventures remind us not to give in to temptation. We hope this helps. Be on fire.

Troy and Jan

OnFire is a weekly letter on faith and character written by Troy Dennis. This letter published Sept 30, 2008. To subscribe or reply, email him at onfireletter@gmail.com. Archives are located at www.onfireletter.com