Pulling the Kill Switch

I don’t think of myself as a klutz, but after Monday’s porch chat about fracturing my elbow, today’s story will probably cement everyone’s impression of me as an accident waiting to happen. I’m willing to risk it. I see an analogy that’s too good not to share.

It happened a couple weeks ago, back when I had no clue an emergency room visit loomed in my near future. At the time, I was using my two functioning arms to pump weights while I went through my treadmill routine. I’d progressed to the jogging sequence on the built-in software’s interval training when I realized I’d left my water bottle out of reach on the bedside table. Drats. Convinced I was dying of thirst and must have water pronto,  I attempted to get off the treadmill without interrupting my workout by pulling the kill switch cord that connects it to the wall’s go-go juice.  Let the record show I’ve done that before– and that I won’t do it again.

I took my left foot and stepped on the stationary frame to the left of the moving belt only I didn’t immediately follow suit with my right foot. I’m sure I was going to had I not started falling. Interestingly, even as I was recovering, and falling, and banging up my shin, and recovering, and falling and hitting my knee, I remember being incredulous at the injustice of it all. I’d already determined to get off the blame thing and yet, here I was taking a licking.

That, my friend, segues beautifully into today’s takeaway.  Turning to Jesus requires turning away from our status quo. We can’t keep one foot in anything Jesus calls sin, whether it’s actions or thought patterns and expect to live in His grace-filled embrace. Anything less than severing from the old life will allow it to continue beating the daylights out of us while we bemoan the injustice of it all because, for goodness sakes, we’ve changed already! To embrace the present with Jesus, we must hit the kill switch to our past.

Hugs, Shellie