That Doll Is Not OK - Thursday July 10, 2014
The heart is more deceitful than all else... Jeremiah 17:9
A little boy at our house a couple days ago kicked one of my daughters' old dolls down a few steps to the hallway. I have a tender spot for old dolls. Wishing to be reassuring, I said, "That doll is OK."
To my surprise the lad responded quietly, "That doll is not OK." I was sobered by the malevolence mixed in with the normal sweetness of the child, as he repeated in a low voice several times, "That doll is not OK."
Human nature is not pretty close up. Oswald Chambers has said, "...there is something in human nature which will laugh in the face of every ideal you have" (My Utmost for His Highest, Jun. 24). Camille Paglia, a Philadelphia feminist quoted in the Wall Street Journal, decries the present administration's politically correct thinking on this subject: "There's this illusion out there that people are basically nice, people are basically kind, if we're just nice and benevolent to everyone they'll be nice too. They literally don't have any sense of evil or criminality" (12/28/13).
I remember the first time my adorable baby looked right at me and deliberately disobeyed, playing in the back of the family station wagon. It was like the Fall replayed.
God says the same thing in Jeremiah 17:9-"The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?" He answers His question in the next verse: "I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, to give to each man according to his ways . . ." (Jeremiah 17:10).
Don't be na‹ve about the natural goodness of a child's or anyone else's heart. God is not. That's what the cross is about. We must start at redemption, not goodness.
Submitted by:
Dotty Vanderhorst
Cornerstone Community Church
Overland Park, Kansas
One-Year Reading Plan:
1 Chronicles 9:1-10:14
Acts 27:21-44
Psalms 8:1-9
Proverbs 18:23-24
[Read
Online]
© 2025 Great Commission Association of Churches, Inc All rights
reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publisher.
Online Bible Services provided by
The Bible Gateway (TM) a service of
Gospel
Communications Network.
SCRIPTURE REFERENCB-ES: Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible B) The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are from the Holy, Bible, New International Version, copyright B) 1973, 1978, 1984 by InternaB-tional Bible Society; (NKJV) are from New King James Version B) 1982 by Thomas Nelson; (NLT) are from the New Living Translation, B) 1996, Tyndale House Publishers; (ESV) are from English Standard VersionB., B) 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers; (TM) are from The Message B) 1993 by NavPress Publishers.