The Miry Bog

Out in the cow pasture, it can get a little boggy.  Let some rain fall and the place where the cows gather around the hay  bales gets to be difficult place to walk.  It is a small herd of cows out there, but they still leave a goodly portion of natural fertilizer where they are standing to eat.  The rain turns it into a virtual bog.  It is always a good idea to be wearing a pair of well laced boots when working in that area.  I learned that one day as I walked out of a pair of loosely tied tennis shoes.  The bog simply sucked them off my feet. 

 

A recent journey into that messy bog caused me to remember one of the academic deans at Asbury College who often offered his testimony by quoting Psalms 40:2 which says in the King James Version, "He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay..."  By the time he finished everyone knew the miry clay was not a place to get caught!  The same might be said of the miry bog around the hay bales out in the cow pasture. 

Of course, sometimes we get caught in the miry bog and fail to recognize what has happened.  It happens as we get caught up in something which we know is displeasing to God, but we choose to ignore all the warning signs and just continue to hang out there.  After a while the sin we choose to walk around in gets a firm grip on our life and has such power that it sucks us under so that we no longer are able to experience the fullness of life in Christ.  The world, and unfortunately, the church as well, has lost sight of the power that sin has over those who succumb to it.  A watered down concept of sin is a miry bog all its own and it would do us all well to stay far away from it.