I was having some discussion the other day about childhood. When I was growing up, I spent most of my summers at the Country Club as a pool rat. All day long, we would grow golden brown, our hair would go bleach blonde and our extremities would prune. Day after day… and we loved it!!!
One my favorite things to do would be to order a Kit-Kat bar from the snack bar for some tummy filling goodies. This Kit-Kat was always chilled, right from the fridge. I didn’t care too much for that. It was more fun to unwrap the bar from the packaging and then place the bar in the sun on top of the foil shiny side up. Then it was back to the pool for some “marco-polo” or something silly while the Kit-Kat melted in the sun. When I returned to eat my treat, there was a gooey feast awaiting my chlorine dripping hands.
It was so fun to feel the chocolate oozing down my throat, smeared on my mouth and then to later, suck my pruned fingers clean of the decadent delight. The finally came when I picked up the foil and rake my tongue across the surface to pick up every last drop of chocolatey goodness.
Amazing, french-fries never had this same appeal. I mean, you leave those things out for too long and they’d grow stale and gross. Surely, there is no longevity to the nature of a french fry.
I bring all of this up simply because I noticed there is an interesting correlation with my childhood and the love of God.
Throughout the Old Testament, we see scripture stating that God “hardened” someone’s heart. That doesn’t sound like free will if God is the one responsible for someone’s heart growing hard. So in class, one of our professors stated it like this, “the same sun that softens butter, hardens clay.”
The variable in the illustration is not the condition of God, but rather, the condition of the person’s heart. People always want someone else to blame because they refuse to accept resposibility for their own circumstance. It started with Adam and it’s been that way ever since.
I’ve had plenty of opportunities where I can admit, I let my heart grow hard. But that all changed. I chose to own my “stuff”. Now my heart is softened, pliable and melted into the arms of grace. I’m grateful to love, grateful to live.
Yet, I know others that allow their hearts to become hardened, bitter, angry and unforgiving. God’s love never changed. These individuals just refused to allow His love in.
So in comparison to “the same sun that softens butter and hardens clay”, I say, “the same sun that softens my Kit-Kat, hardens my french fries.”
