One morning I was having a bowl of blackberries as a part of my breakfast. Some tasted sweet, others tasted tart; but overall they tasted pretty good. I picked up one particular blackberry, and what I saw next just ruined my breakfast.
“EWWW!” I yelled.
“What is it?” Mom asked as she rushed into the kitchen.
“Look! There’s a WORM!”
My mom picked up the blackberry where the little worm was inching along, but then just before she washed it off in the kitchen sink, an idea that only a blogger would think of crashed into my mind.
“Mom, wait!” I said. “I could use that as an object lesson for the blog!”
“Uh, okay,” Mom then placed the blackberry with the worm back into the bowl, and I promptly took a picture of it. Below is the photo:
As disgusting as it may look, I can’t help but see an important lesson in this. In Genesis 1:31, the Bible says that after God made everything, He saw all the things He had just created and saw them as being “very good.” But after sin came into the picture, this world God made went from being “very good” to very bad. In fact, this is what Ellen White says about our world:
Christ might commission the angels of heaven to pour out the vials of His wrath on our world, to destroy those who are filled with hatred of God. He might wipe this dark spot from His universe. But He does not do this. He is today standing at the altar of incense, presenting before God the prayers of those who desire His help. {Desire of Ages pg. 568 par. 4}
Praise the Lord for His mercy over our planet! But what I’d like to draw to your attention is that the gross-looking little worm is like the sin that has marred our world. Before, God made our world so beautiful the angels of Heaven sang with joy after its creation was complete (Job 38:4-7). But just like the blackberry didn’t look good with the worm, so did our world didn’t look good with sin infesting its whole atmosphere.
However, it is not only our darkened planet that has suffered with the “worm” of sin. Even our hearts have been darkened as well with the sinful worms of “adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like” (Galatians 5:19-21). It’s like our carnal natures are filled with “heart worms,” if you will.
Well, in continuing with my story of the blackberry worm, Mom pretty much washed off the worm and washed the blackberry. So now it was good. But, in a way, that’s also what God does to the worms of sin in our hearts. He sent His Son to our dark, wormy planet to die so that the dark, wormy sins in our hearts may be washed away by His blood and His grace!
Don’t you want your heart worms of sin to be washed off by God’s grace and the blood of His Son, Jesus? Don’t you desire your own little, dark, wormy world to be cleansed by God’s forgiveness and love? Then just pray:
Not only do we have hope that God will wash our hearts and recreate them, but when He comes a second time, He will wash this entire world with fire and recreate it into the world He had made before the Fall. This hope is recorded in Revelation 21:5, and I’d like to conclude this post with that verse:
Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.”
May the Lord wash, purify, and recreate our hearts to also be “true and faithful” to Him until that day.
Amen!