A Bump On A Log

Certain Things make us feel uncomfortable. Like the Discussion of Money. Talk about Jesus or the use of certain unacceptable words in public. One of the uncomfortable discussions we can have as a church that calls ourselves Followers of Christ is about whether or not we are doing what we should be as compared to just nodding at the facts like we agree or are actually living the teachings we hear each week. This morning in my email I found a pertinent Daily Devotional from John Fischer. I would encourage you to read it and then click on the link to subscribe to his Daily Email called Catch of the day. God Bless!

Jump!
by John Fischer

Three frogs are sitting on a log. One decides to jump down. How many are left? Three. He only decided he was going to jump. He didn't actually jump. Oh, he may have made a great decision. He might have even decided he was going to jump really far when he jumped down, or scream all the way and make a big deal of it. Or his decision may have come out of a good deal of soul searching. He might have been thinking: This time I'm really going to do this. I'm committing myself whole-heartedly to jumping off this log. This is it; there's no turning back now. But regardless of what he tells himself or how far he stretches this out, until he actually jumps, nothing has changed. He's still just a bump on a log.

A friend of mine often says that a decision without action is delusion. I've only deluded myself into thinking I've changed when I really haven't. The decision was only in my head.

Yesterday I wrote a catch about being a good listener to someone in his or her time of grief. After speaking with my sister upon the rapid decline and death of her husband, I was somewhat reluctant to keep calling. What do I say now? There are no words that can possibly reach this pain. That's when I realized, at the end of yesterday's Catch, that I could call my sister even if I didn't have anything to say to her, because I had realized the most important thing I could do for her is listen well. And I'm sure I gave the impression that the next thing I was going to do after writing that Catch was to pick up the phone and call her. But did I? No. You see I decided I could call her, I even decided I would call her, but I didn't actually call her.

I'm still only a bump on a log.

Jesus constantly talked about being doers of the word and not just hearers only. It was one of his major themes. It must have been important or he wouldn't have repeated it so much. We have lots of hearers in evangelical Christianity. Some of us have gotten so good at this, we could be known as professional hearers. We might even make a decision supported by going forward in a meeting and sealing our decision with a witness and a prayer. But until we do something about it, we are just a bunch of bumps on a log. Professional bumps—deluded bumps—but bumps nonetheless.

There's only one way off this log… Jump!

"Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock… But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand." (Matthew 7:24 & 26)

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