Grits

Being Southerners, we have learned to love grits! We all (except for Josh) eat them, buttered, cheese, or just plain with salt and pepper, white or yellow, we love them all! I usually make a pot of them every morning, and all that's left is what we couldn't scrape (but not for lack of trying!) Some days, like Sundays, when it's an early morning rush to get to church, I leave everything to make it to church in plenty of time. I leave the dishes in the sink, and sometimes even he pot that had the grits on the stove. Consequently, I have learned why grits have their name. When I come home after church, and I have a pot of grits that has been allowed to sit and dry, I am left with a mixture so hard and so strong that I think it might have been able to have held Rome together. And the grits are exactly like sandpaper...the really "high grit" kind. It got me thinking about the times when I have allowed sin or offense to just sit around in my mind and heart a little too long. Those times when I should have quickly dealt with those specific things in the right way, but instead, I chose to hold on to them little longer out of laziness, or bitterness, or feeling justified to do so. No matter what the reason for holding on to them, the result was always the same. My heart became hard and rough, two characteristics that are fatal to any heart. In the natural, if our heart becomes hardened, death is not far behind, unless we make some radical changes. The same goes in the spiritual. Our hearts can become so hard and rough, so calloused by those things that we have decided (foolishly) are too important to just let go. We end up fooling ourselves into thinking that we are just fine, and wondering what is wrong with everyone else around us, as we go day by day like walking dead men. We are all guilty of letting our sin or offense fester, whether is is for a moment, a month or a lifetime. Only God can turn our heart of stone into a heart flesh once again. And only God can give us the strength to never pick up the offense or the sin in the first place. That is our wonderful hope. God can do it!! As for my pot of grits, my only hope is to deal quickly and swiftly with what remains. Put off my laziness and clean that pot!

Here are just a couple (of the many) scriptures on the subject:

Ephesians 4:18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.


Hebrews 3:12-13  See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.