Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Breaking Old Habits


Our basketball goal is broken.  Our next door neighbor’s goal is good, unused but the pole is bent. So I made the offer to get rid of it for him if we could have the rim.  DEAL!  Well, riding to Lowe’s we noticed the exact pole we needed in a backyard dug up and still in concrete.  I stopped and offered to break that one up as well for the pole.  DEAL!
THEN THE WORK BEGAN!!!  We thought a few licks with the sledge hammer would do the trick, but we were in for hours of drilling and tapping to get the concrete off.  We worked several hours Saturday and some Sunday afternoon and finished Monday night with both poles. We are now set for digging a new hole, pouring new concrete and soon enjoying a really good remodeled basketball goal in our driveway. 
Here was our lesson.  Sin clings to us like hard cement on a pole.  Sometimes through the pounding from a friend, big pieces fall away.  More often, it takes the constant drilling, pecking, chiseling of a brother friend to piece by small piece rid ourselves of what clings to us. The pole has its responsibility as well.  It must let go.  Several times I noticed pieces falling away that had no bearing on our work, they just fell away.  By the time you are reading this, hopefully in my driveway, a brand new creation will stand tall and firmly grounded as a testimony of a life renewed and no longer as an eyesore. 

“Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” Proverbs 27:17