This Morning's Breakfast

There are so many things that are good about Saturday morning.  I don’t have to set my alarm clock, my calendar doesn't have appointments every fifteen minutes, and I can pretty much do as I please, a distinct change from the five preceding days of the week.

One of these little luxuries is a full breakfast; I mean bacon, eggs, coffee, grits, toast, the whole nine yards.  As the sun sleepily rises and the aroma of coffee winds its way through the house, I prepare the bacon, eggs, and toast, eagerly awaiting the moment when all the elements come together for a culinary masterpiece.  Ok, so I’m not a gourmet chef, but I get by.

Once everything is ready, I sit down at my table, turn on some soft music, and begin to enjoy the fruits of my labor.  After breakfast, and after the kitchen is cleaned, I start my day.  Throughout the morning as I come and go, I notice the lingering aroma of bacon that has permeated everything in the house.  Now the smell of bacon at 6:00 a.m. is distinctly different from its aroma at, let’s say, 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon.  It just seems to lose its appeal after seven hours and becomes more of a nuisance rather than a real pleasure.

This idea was not lost on the writer of Hebrews.  In fact, he fully understood that sin in one’s life is exactly like the aroma of my breakfast that lingers long after the initial enjoyment is gone. In Hebrews 11:25 we read, “He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.”

This passage is taken from Hebrews 11, a chapter better known as the Hall of Fame of faith.  Numerous people from both the Old and New Testaments are listed here as examples of the kind of faith that pleases God.  In this particular passage, the writer speaks of Moses who led Israelout of four hundred years of bondage to the land promised to Abraham.

There are two quick thoughts tucked neatly away in this passage.  First, notice that the writer describes sin as pleasurable.  This is an accurate description.  No one would be tempted to do something that wasn’t pleasurable to them and yielding to that pleasure, in whatever form, constitutes sin.  But the author doesn’t end there.  Notice he states that these pleasures last only for a “short time.”  Just like my breakfast, the meal is short but the aroma hangs around, serving as a reminder to me and a signal to others of what I had for breakfast.

Left unchecked, sin permeates everything, invading the very fabric of our lives until the aroma we produce is unpleasant to ourselves, to others, and especially go God.  The blood of Jesus Christ serves to remove and totally eradicate the odor and stain of sin in our lives.  What does the aroma of your life say about you today?  Is it attracting or repelling those around you?  What did you have for breakfast this morning?