Luke 6:45
The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.
A couple years back, when my boys were but little tiny things running around on shorter legs and eating anything sweet, they spent some time with their Aunt Laura. They love their time at her house, because she’s fun and gives them plenty of that sweet stuff, and this visit was no exception. It was a nice break for Wendy and me, and eventually they came home and life continued as normal. Well, at least until the next time they went to the bathroom and everyone freaked out about the, ahem, blue poo that was left in the toilet.
Now, there are a lot of things that we see in bathrooms throughout our lifetimes that are, let’s say, a little weird, right? But BLUE POO??? How does that happen? Our minds were racing as we tried to assess what type of dreadful disease both of our sons had contracted? Colorful Bowel Syndrome? Blue-poo-enza?
A quick call to Aunt Laura, though, cleared it all up (well, not all of it – the poo took a day or so). Being the fun aunt she was, she had found a unique food that she thought they’d get a kick out of and had served them blue apple sauce. As it turned out, we all got a big kick out of it, and I got the perfect illustration for our verse. That “what goes in must come out” thing really is true (and sometimes, illustrated in Technicolor)!
As much as we want to hope that we’re strong enough to watch or listen to anything we want without it affecting us, Jesus knew it wasn’t possible. He knew that we were created to reflect outwardly what we’ve received inwardly. Want blue poo? Eat blue apple sauce (other blue foods may work, too, if you want to experiment). What you store inside will eventually show outside. Sure, we hate it, because it’s one of those principles that exposes us for who we really are, and that can be a bit, well, stinky. But let’s look at it from the positive side before we wrap this up…
If we’re faithful to store good things, then we can have all the confidence in the world that good things will come out of us. We’ll find ourselves saying the right things at the right times. We’ll have hope for hopeless people. Joy for joyless people. Normal colored poo for…well, you get the point, right? I guess there’s really no need to sit around any longer trying to work this one out.
Store good things now so you’ll be prepared to give good things later. And please, stay away from blue apple sauce.
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