John 10:10 “The enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy.”
George Orwell once observed: “I thought of a rather cruel trick I played on one occasion on a wasp. He was sucking jam on my plate, and I cut him in half. He paid no attention, merely went on with his meal, while a tiny stream of jam trickled out of his severed oesophagus. Only when he tried to fly away did he grasp the dreadful thing that had happened to him. It is the same with modern man. The thing that has been cut away is his soul.”
How perceptive he is, and yet how insidious is the danger! How is your soul doing today – cut away or well preserved? Satan is described in the Bible as “the father of lies”, who “was a murderer from the beginning”, and when “he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar” (John 8:44). It is so easy for us to get distracted to death by the endless array of possibilities offered to us in our consumer society.
In another vivid instance of distraction, a swarm of gulls were feasting on the carcasses of dead fish embedded in a number of blocks of ice floating down the river towards Niagara Falls. As they came to the brink, they would rise up effortlessly on their wings and escape from the falls. But one particular gull was deeply engrossed in the carcass of a fish, and when it finally came to the brink of the falls, out went its powerful wings. It flapped and flapped and even lifted the ice out of the water, but it had delayed too long and its claws had frozen into the ice. The weight of the ice was too great, and the gull plunged to its death in the thundering water below.
Are you distracted or alert today? Peter warns us: “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him” (1 Peter5:8).
Lord, I choose be to alert today. Amen!
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