Monday, February 20, 2006

Unforgiveness and Silly Putty

Unforgivness is like silly putty. You hide your silly putty in your pocket and it gets into the cloth of your jacket. You forget all about hiding it in your pocket until one day you stick your hand in your pocket and the silly putty gets stuck on your glove. You don't realize it is out of your pocket, no longer where you hid it but now on your glove. You reach out to hug your child and it gets stuck on the back of his coat. He sits down next to you at church and the silly putty gets stuck on the back of the chair. When he gets up and leaves for children's church, there it is. A large neon green blob is sticking on the back of the chair he was sitting in and you wonder... how the heck did that darn silly putty get out of my pocket onto that chair. So you sit in church trying to pick the putty out of the seat so it doesn't rub off on anyone's clothes.
The truth about silly putty is it gets in between the fibers of every peice of clothing it touches. You can remove the bulk of it but it leaves behind a slick surface where the putty is down in between each fiber ruining the fabric and transferring itself to every peice of fabric that touches it there after.
Unforgiveness is like silly putty. You hide an offense against someone in your heart thinking it is out of sight of out of mind. You forget all about hiding it in your heart until one day you open up your heart to someone else entirely and either can't love them or trust them and you don't really understand why. You don't realize it is an old offense that got stuck onto your new relationship. Even the way you love your children can be effected by the old offense and a little rubs off on them and the way they treat others. You don't even know this is happening until one day while you are sitting in church the Holy Spirit brings this person who long ago offended you to your mind. You think, "Why the heck am I thinking about that person?" And slowly the Spirit begins to pick at your heart removing the bits and peices of offenses and unforgiveness from deep down into the fibers of your very soul. Because offenses slime their way in between the hidden fibers of our heart, our soul, and our mind.
The only way to get rid of them is to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal your unforgiveness to you and start picking it out. I have also heard coating it with peanut butter before washing helps too!

2 comments:

kiki said...

Wow, very profound. I laughed at the last line! It's really nice to hear your Godly wisdom all wrapped up in such a cute story.

Kimberly Brixey said...

True Story. I made a few minor changes so no one at church will realize it was our silly pink putty that is stuck to the chair that just got on the seat of their pants. And actually the putty was in the front pocket of my son's sweatshirt where he put his billfold, then the putty was stuck to his billfold. I caught him picking it off and throwing it on the floor, but I made him pick it up and we made the little pieces into a ball which we cleverly stuck to the wooden arm of the chair. Thinking it wouldn't get stuck to the wood, I planned to throw it away after the service. But during the offering song I lifted up my arms to worship and realized the darn putty was stuck on the elbow of my sweater. I tried picking it out while Pastor Pieter preached about unforgiveness and I realized how much those offenses spread just like this silly putty! Then I turned and looked where Connor had been sitting and somehow a big blob of it had gotten on the back of the chair. What a mess! I diligently tried to pick it all out but little peices were left embedded in fabric. We won't sit on the that row again! LOL!
Oh yes, share a PB&J with the Holy Spirit--- always soothes a weary soul.