Off-White Comparision

While unloading the dishwasher the other day, I wiped dry one of my favorite tea mugs and prepared to place it in the cabinet. I noticed behind the rows of coffee mugs, deep in the shadows of the cabinet, the glimpse of a familiar mug I had been looking for. Reaching far back into the dark space, I pulled out the lost cup. Pleased at my findings, I sat my two mugs side by side on the self as to not forget to use them both. Only then did I notice an obvious difference between them. Designed to be identical, one of the elegant white cups now looked altered. The mug I had retrieved from the dishwasher was slightly darker than the recently rescued one.

I quickly concluded that my daily black tea had quietly stained my frequented cup. I hadn't noticed the difference until I compared it with the originally intended color. "Funny how things can change without me noticing," I thought to myself. I shrugged off the matter and went on to unload the rest of the dishwasher.

It wasn't until a little later that God used the incident to remind me of a principle He had been teaching me. Someone I know had recently brought up the question, "Why do we need to study God's Word?" I thought it to be an absurd question. We are Christians ... reading the Bible is what we do. But that is no answer for a skeptic, or a Christian. Studying God's Word is like holding up the perfect, unstained coffee mug to the one we use every day. Do they compare? Are they the same color? Where and how are we stained?

God's Word is the standard, not the environment around us. Oftentimes I pardon myself by comparing my character, responses, and worldview with the people around me. "Oh, I am not as bad as them..." kind of stuff. This is why we must daily be confronted with the Word. It flatters nothing. It holds the truth about how we are to live and grow. And it shows us where we are getting stained.

Like my tea mug, becoming stained happens quietly. Every morning the color of my mug grew darker in it's complexion, but ever so slightly. If not for the rediscovery of the unsoiled mug, I wouldn't have known anything was different about my cup, or that it needed a better scrubbing. The Bible is the same way. It shows us the perfect standard. Paul compared it to "looking in a mirror," it reveals the true person.

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. (James 1:22-25)

Now on to the "doing" ...  and the scrubbing.