The Dead Rat

As humans we’re great at justifying and diminishing our sin. We pretend it’s not there or ignore it, hoping it will go away. It’s like taking Advil for a broken leg. Let me tell you how nasty our sin is. Two summers ago I woke up in the middle of the night and smelled this horrible smell. I knew it was the smell of death, because I lost two hamsters as a kid, but I was so tired I went back to bed. The next morning was a Sunday, so I went off to church early. My wife texted me around 8 am and said this, “I think there’s something dead under our house.” I knew she was right, but I just told her to open the windows and air the house out.

After church I got home and the house smelt fine. But before we went to bed we shut the windows and the smell of death returned. I knew what I had to do. I had to crawl under the house and see what was there. So I geared up: I put on old dirty pants, an old sweatshirt and my kid’s headlamp. I grabbed a hoe from the garage, incase I had to fight off any wild critters, and went under the house. It was a long crawl but as I neared the opposite side of the house, right under my bed, I saw this little nest in the corner. Now I was ready for the battle!

I started poking at it with the hoe. I actually was wishing I had something better because I was waiting for something to jump out and eat me. All my irrational fears expressed themselves under the house that night. Nothing came out, so I pulled down the nest down and began opening it to see if that was really the problem. There it was, a big old nasty dead rat! The smell was horrible. I had a bag with me and cleaned up the mess and made my way out.

Because I love my wife and value a fresh smelling home, I crawled under the house to clean up the mess. This dead rat is what your hidden sin is like. You’ve hidden sin in your life, closed the windows so no one can see it, and are pretending it will disappear. There are too many times in your life you haven’t dealt with the sin immediately. If you have hidden sin in your life, I implore you to fight the sin. Gear up, do the hard work, and clean the sin out of your life so you can live the the righteous life God is calling you to.