Idols

Did I mention I am loving my Microsoft Surface Pro tablet/computer? This picture was painted by using the watercolor app on the Pro. I have snowy cold mountains on my mind because the forecast is not changing and I am in charge of the ski group slated to go skiing on the coldest day in eons in the NC mountains. If the forecast holds, it is going to be cold enough to freeze the synovial fluid in our joints. Frostbite will take approximately 27 seconds to permanently remove all our noses. Fifty below zero windchill! We have to cancel, sadly.

This is disappointing but not as disappointing as Sunday's sermon. I knew I was in trouble as soon as I sat down and read the title on the bulletin for the sermon:
Family Idols.

I leaned over to my husband and whispered in a panic, "Oh-oh. I hope this doesn't convict my spirit that I will have to give up the Surface Pro."

Fortunately, the sermon focused less on material "idols" in our life and more on relationship idols. It hovered across that pesky verse about anyone "who doesn't hate their father and mother, sister and brother cannot be my disciple." I have always wondered about this verse, but was just relieved that the pastor said NOTHING about hating the Surface Pro as a precondition to following Jesus. Whew!

However, he did make sense of that verse that has always troubled me about hating one's loved ones before one could follow Jesus. He said the term is relative. If one loves Jesus as one should love Jesus, it is so all consuming, so powerful, and so intense that by comparison, all other love pales.  That kind of love is as distant from all other love as fifty degrees below zero is from "a little cold spell." This is the way we are to love our Lord. Whatever else eclipses that kind of love for our savior is an idol in our life.

If I use the Surface Pro as a tool to express to the world the need for Jesus, and how ardently we should love the one who died for us to pay the penalty we owe for our sins...is it still an idol?  I hope not. Really I do.

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 Luke 14: 25-27
²⁵ Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: ²⁶ “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. ²⁷ And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

 Isaiah 44:12-18
12 The ironsmith takes a cutting tool and works it over the coals. He fashions it with hammers and works it with his strong arm. He becomes hungry, and his strength fails; he drinks no water and is faint. 13 The carpenter stretches a line; he marks it out with a pencil. He shapes it with planes and marks it with a compass. He shapes it into the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house. 14 He cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. 15 Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. 16 Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, "Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!" 17 And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, "Deliver me, for you are my god!"
18 They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand.