Tuesday, February 16, 2010

The hardest word to say

Random thoughts that meander until a painting of sorts is formed:

Temptation: That which tricks us into following.

Following: That act we do when we are incapable of leading.

Leading: That which I do constantly, and that which constantly leads to my downfall.

Downfall: As a verb, that sin that leads to redemption; as a noun, that area in my life that is largest since I fall down so often.

Redemption: That which I need more than anything; that which only my Jesus can provide.

Jesus: The only one who can withstand temptation.

Think of all this exercise this way. I love ice cream. On a scale of 1 to 10 (and scale is the appropriate noun here), I love vanilla ice cream about a 19. I love the taste, the texture, the timing, the ice and the cream. I love it in the way that some love football or baseball or movies or whatever is that famous first-love that Jesus talks about early in Revelation.

I would eat it every day except for a couple of facts. One, it ruins my digestive track and clogs up my innards in ways I didn't know was possible a few years ago. Two, it layers on layers of fat that I knew existed but thought would run off and join someone else's circus.

As my dear Mary tells me, if someone put a tub of vanilla in front of me with a spoon lying close by (or not), I could not resist the urge, as it were. Could not. I can take someone hitting me three times in the face (as I discovered recently at one of those literally God forsaken parades) but I could not resist cream that is frozen.

It is my albatross, hanging not around my neck but around my navel.

So what can I do? That's the tough question. If I accept that I have no viable defense against the temptation of ice cream, what do I do to continue to, er, have the plumbing work correctly?

My only defense is a very good offense. I must make sure there is no one with tubs of ice cream nearby. If it is not in the house, or perhaps better yet, I'm not in an area that has readily available ice cream, then I can't eat it. Not even I can make ice cream from nothing (or bread from stones if you get my meaning).

Let's put it another way: An alcoholoic must change his very habits, meaning an alcoholic must not got to bars or any other place that he or she was used to going to drink. If the alcoholic is near alcohol, especially early in his or her sobriety, then the temptation to drink will overome. This whole mess of will power will get you nothing but fatter or drunker or even dead if taken to the extreme.

Temptation, therefore, is just another word for something more to lose. Don't put oneself in position and one won't lose. Put yourself near the temptation and like a desert traveller, water will overcome even the DNA of a camel and the ugly animal in all of us will come out.

Ronald Meredith describes one quiet night in early spring: "Suddenly out of the night came the sound of wild geese flying. I ran to the house and breathlessly announced the excitement I felt. What is to compare with wild geese across the moon? It might have ended there except for the sight of our tame mallards on the pond. They heard the wild call they had once known.

"The honking out of the night sent little arrows of prompting deep into their wild yesterdays. Their wings fluttered a feeble response. The urge to fly--to take their place in the sky for which God made them--was sounding in their feathered breasts, but they never raised from the water. The matter had been settled long ago. The corn of the barnyard was too tempting! Now their desire to fly only made them uncomfortable. Temptation always is enjoyed at the price of losing the capacity for flight."

The temptation, which changes in each of us (your temptation probably isn't my temptation), is alive and vibrant. All we can do in defense is turn to the one who was tempted and succeeded in saying that hardest of words, "No."

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