Cracks!

He lifted me out of the ditch, pulled me from the deep mud. He stood me on a solid rock to make sure I would not slip. Psalm 40:2

A while ago, I was talking to a friend who had discovered that the foundation of his house was begining to show its age because cracks were developing there. The doors were getting hard to open and close, and there were places where the bricks were separating. The cracks were small , but the concern was that they would continue to grow.

This conversation took me back to the first place Randy and I lived after we got married. Randy was in school at Emory, and I had secured a teaching position in DeKalb County, so we were looking for a place in a location which was convenient for both of us. After a search, we found an older house on a quiet street near Agnes Scott College which seemed to fit our needs.

The two story home was built in the late eighteen hundreds, and the owner was renting the downstairs and the upstairs as apartments. Two students already had the downstairs, so Randy and I rented the upstairs for our first home. It was a large space with high ceilings and large rooms. We furnished it with old furniture from my parents, his parents, and an old couch an Emory student was selling on the street!

The kitchen had a little cubby for a small table, so we used an old one that belonged to Randy’s mom. The house had a few (many) problems, but when we sat down the first time at our table, we noticed that if you put food on one end, it would slide to the other. We joked that it was a good thing because we never had to pass our food.

The owner sent someone out to check out the problem and make sure the room was safe. They found a supporting beam which had cracked, and could no longer support the floor, so it had to be replaced. They did a “fix” but unforunately, the floor still sloped!

The owner knew this was a temporary fix, but he did just enough to satisfy us and put it out of his mind. Fortunately, we moved to Snellville at the end of the first year, so we were lucky that we weren’t there to experience the result.

Just like cracks in the foundation of a house, the foundation of our lives can experience cracks. It’s easy to ignore them. For example, most of us were brought up on a solid foundation of faith. We went to church, we believed in the sciprtures, and we prayed. Gradually, cracks begin to appear in our spiritual lives, but we don’t realize how bad they have become until we are faced with difficulties in life. We suddenly realize how large the cracks are and how much they have separted us from the foundation of our faith.

On January 19, 1919, a steel vat containing 2.3 million gallons of molten molases burst and created a 30 foot tall wave of the syrup which drowned people and horses, destroyed buildings, and crushed freight cars and automobiles. The enormous tank had cracks, and company officials had reacted to the constantly leaking cracks by repainting the tank to match the color of the molasses. Their philosophy was “out of sight, out of mind.” The officials knew it was dangerous, but they did nothing about it, and 21 people were killed.

There’s an important lesson for us in the above stories. They say that we must pay close attention to the cracks in our spiritual lives because what we ignore today, we may drown in tomorrow. As Christians, the further we get away from the Lord as the foundation of our life, the more we substitute other things as the foundation of our lives.

It happens to all of us, even the disciples were guilty of ignoring the cracks in their walk with Jesus. Before the Passover meal Jesus washed the feet of the disciples, but the disciples forgot to wash the feet of Jesus. After Jesus explained how the bread and wine symbolized His upcoming crucifixion, they started arguing about which of them would be the greatest in the kingdom. They were ignoring their cracks.

The good news for us all is that Jesus still loves us even though we have ignored the cracks in our foundation. This week we need to remember to check our spiritual foundation for cracks. Don’t ignore the cracks that separate us from Jesus as the Rock.