When I was younger, I used to pray that one night I would fall asleep and God would just take me to heaven, and that would be that. I know, pretty morbid, right? I wasn’t praying for new toys or a puppy. I just kept on praying, “God take me home.”
I have always been incredibly aware that this place, Earth, is not my home. There’s so much pain, so much sadness, so much anger, just so much evil. You just know that this can’t be what God intended for us. We’re now so far away from what He originally created and meant for us that I’m not really sure we even know what we’re looking at anymore.
Now I’ll be the first to admit it sucks. It’s incredibly disappointing and scary. Ever since sin came into the world, it has slowly begun to fall apart. To give you a clearer picture of what I mean, I’d like to explain three types of sin.
- Sin – The Fallen State of the World
- Sin That We Participate In
- Sin That is Perpetrated Against Us
Sin – The Fallen State of the World
When sin was introduced into the world in the garden, when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, not only were they changed, but nature itself changed. It became fallen, and in this fallen state, the fields now needed to be tended to. The animals no longer lived in harmony. Natural disasters became a thing, and we now had death.
We still live in this fallen world, and it falls apart a little bit more every day. We see this just from the numerous once-in-a-lifetime disasters many of us have now lived through – devastating floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes – that leave nothing but destruction in their wake. It’s not just natural disasters either; babies are born with birth defects, cancer takes the lives of so many, the animals all have to hunt each other to survive, and the list goes on and on. Had sin never come into this world, there would be no pain, no disasters, no struggle, and no death.
Sin That We Participate In
To get to that fallen state, sin had to come into the world. This then poses the question, what is sin? In James 4:17, it says, “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” Plain and simple, sin is disobedience. Now I know this is the part where many of us say, “Yes, but . . .” because it seems like it is so much more complex than that. But truly, it isn’t. God did not send us into this world with this hidden list of sins that we don’t know about and can only hope that we never ever do.
He very plainly and simply gives us the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:1-17 alongside the commandment to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves in Matthew 22:37. And whenever we step outside of those commandments, that is sin. No matter how big. No matter how small.
Sin That is Perpetrated Against Us
Every one of us has been hurt by someone else before. In John 16:33, it says, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” Whether that be something small or large, it can be incredibly painful and come with certain consequences.
A mother drinks while she is pregnant, and to no fault of the baby, that baby will develop fetal alcohol syndrome. A teenage girl is shoved off a bridge into a body of water, where she is injured and left paralyzed. A drunk driver collides with a family of four, killing them instantaneously. A father is shot and killed for speaking his beliefs, and now his family has to figure out how to carry on without him. Every one of us has heard these stories and even been impacted by the sin of others. Sadly, there is no automatic exemption, even for Christians, from the effect others’ sins might have on us.
I understand that I’ve more than likely created more problems than I have solutions for at this point. Knowing just how far earth is from being our true home and the effects of sin can leave us with many questions like, “What’s the point of being here if this place is so awful? Why does any of it matter?”
I will not sit here and pretend that I have all of the answers, because I ask all of these same questions. I ask them when we have baby goats stillborn. I ask them when I see someone who is homeless. I ask them when a Christian is murdered for their faith. But us asking these questions doesn’t mean that we don’t have faith or anything like that. It just isn’t easy living in a place that isn’t your home.
So what’s the point in being here if this place isn’t our home? For starters, this is like our audition period. This is where we get to decide if we want to have a relationship with God through Jesus and whether or not we’re going to follow and obey Him. (Which, if you have, that’s fantastic, and congratulations. And if you haven’t, I encourage you to make that decision today to surrender your life to Him, because there is an unfathomable type of love in a relationship with Him.) Now, assuming that we say, “Yes, I do want a relationship with Him, and I am going to do my darnedest to follow Him.” What comes next?
In Matthew 5:14-16, it says, “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” In John 1:5 it says, “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”
When we enter into a relationship with God, we become a light for Him. A really cool analogy for this is that God is the sun, and we are the moon. The sun (God) shines on the moon (us), and the moon reflects its light. So as God pours into us, we are then able to pour into others. So why is this important? Well, have you ever been outside at night when the moon is out? It’s dark, but with that light from the moon, you can still see. I think that this is what John is trying to convey. When we have God in us, and we reflect Him out to others and that darkness in the world, then that darkness cannot coexist with God’s light.
Unfortunately, sin is here until Jesus comes back. But that doesn’t mean that we are helpless to it. We can choose not to sin, and we can do our part to be a light for who God is. And that light will always overcome darkness.
– Written by Michaela
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