TITLE: A Symphony of Miracles Chapter 28 Worms in the Apple 3/24/14 By Richard McCaw 03/24/14 |
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Chapter 28
Worms in the Apple
In spite of all the evidence that God has left His creative fingerprints in the material world, we may still remain blind to how deceitful our heart is, and how sinful and far away we are from Him. It often takes some significant incident or tragedy to awaken in our conscience that we are lost and without God
Most of us have seen politicians, neatly dressed, who spoke confidently and seemed such fine personalities. We may have believed that kindness and honesty flowed from every word and from deep in their hearts as they expressed concern for the poor and afflicted in our society. Then, we voted to move them into office to serve our country. Later, we heard that they were scheming all the time to make themselves rich with the dollars of the taxpayers, or that they were caught in the midst of scandal and had to demit office.
The human heart is the same anywhere, as you will see in the following incident.1
When we were then living at Conolley Avenue in Kingston, playing backyard cricket with neighborhood children was always a whole lot of fun! Our field was the dirt yard surrounded by two or three mango trees. The trunk of one we used as a wicket.
One day, as we were playing, someone hit a ball above the mango trees. As it fell through the branches and leaves of a mango tree, one of the boys tried to catch it, but it slipped right through his fingers. I became so angry that I exploded with one of the foulest, obscene words conceivable. Astonished at myself and extremely embarrassed, I hid my face in my crossed arms against the nearest tree and wished I could have disappeared.
At some time, I must have heard someone cursing or expressing anger with foul language. Jesus did warn us, “Take heed what you hear!”
“Where did that come from?” I thought. “Was all that corruption in My heart?”
Have you ever dipped your hand into a bag of succulent apples and chosen the reddest, juiciest looking one? As you bit into its fragrant flesh, did you ever come across the wriggling creature of a worm?
“Was I like a beautiful apple, but whose hidden problems began to surface?”
Not long after, we moved to Trevennion Park Road, off Half Way Tree Road, one of the main roads in Kingston. To the right of the premises was a large house, with a spacious lawn that overlooked the main street. In the front yard stretched a large grape arbor, the temptation of every child. How many times returning home from school I looked right and left to make sure no-one was looking, and how often my nimble fingers snatched some of those luscious purple grapes, only God knows.
That simple act of stealing grapes could have been for me the beginning of a life of crime. Don’t laugh, because many a man spending years behind bars can tell you that their journey to the prison house began at home or somewhere else, taking something that belonged to someone else!
I remember two boys at school, who always sat at the back of each class, and who I imagine thought that they were smart enough to get away with cheating. In every test, no matter what subject, they would place a book under the desk where they could easily see the answers, or pass notes to each other, in order to pass their tests.
However, one boy moved on boldly to other forms of stealing. When last I heard of him, he was serving time in prison. That could have been me! Thank God for His marvelous grace!
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