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
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