When did the pumpkin get so big that it could not be pushed back into the vegetable garden where it belongs?
In my back yard, we have a swimming pool, with an old swimming pool fence around it. I am sure you can imagine the kind… It is a black metal fence with vertical struts and borders the pool. On one side is the swimming pool and on the other is a beautiful little vegetable garden that my three children – who are much better gardeners than me – use to grow their plants.
A few months ago, as I was making a Sunday lunch, one of my sons grabbed a pumpkin seed out of the pile of scraps and took it away. And now – there is a massive pumpkin plant taking over the vegetable patch.
Now, I am not sure if you have ever seen a pumpkin plant, but they are very interesting things. They grow across the ground like a vine and cover everything.
My children have been quite excited about this plant because even though none of them eat pumpkin, all of them love watching this plant grow and thrive.
A few months ago they noticed that the vice had spread through the gaps in the pool fence and began to stretch over the pool decking. When it stretched, there was a tiny little pumpkin that started growing on the wrong side of the fence. We all saw the pumpkin and thought it was very cute and did not really do anything about it.
Now, we have a giant pumpkin growing on the vine on the wrong side of the pool fence and it can now no longer fit back through the fence to the vegetable garden.
And I have been thinking about that pumpkin plant and that pumpkin today as I have been thinking about sin…
You see, sin is like that pumpkin plant… It starts off very very small and before long, it takes off and overtakes everything. Just as the little pumpkin began growing on the wrong side of the pool fence, so too does sin usually start with a little thing. Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Christ, did not start off with the BIG betray, but probably with the much smaller ones. First the first small vice crept in. Surely, he thought to himself. “It is not that bad.” “It is not that serious.” “Everyone else is doing it.” “I am good with everything else, it is just this one little thing.”
And I strongly suspect that Judas would have thought these things, because I have thought them too…
And that makes me wonder… When did the pumpkin get so big that it could not be pushed back into the vegetable garden where it belongs?
Because if I can answer that question, I might be able to answer the more important question, which is… When did my sins become so big that I became Judas and banished myself from Paradise?
Because if I could answer that question, then I could beg my Heavenly Father to forgive me and help me to start again – this time on the right side of the fence!
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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