who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."
Isaiah 5:20
But the big thing I noticed as soon as I opened the door was the smell. To me, it was anything but a pleasant fragrance. In fact, I wondered if I’d be able to endure it and for a quick moment I considered leaving. But my manicurist was waiting so I took my chair, and as I settled in I realized the smell was incense, an odor to which I’m unaccustomed.
It wasn’t long before my nails began to look like new and quite suddenly I realized I hardly noticed the strange smell. As I finished up, only a slight bit of the odor remained. Actually, it shocked me how quickly it had dissipated. But while I was thinking about it, I felt that familiar nudge in my heart that I’ve come to recognize as a time when God wants to say something. This time He reminded me that that’s the way of sin. When sin first rears its ugly head in our lives, it stands out. But when we allow it to stay, before long we hardly notice it. We simply get used to it.
That, I think, is what has happened to our culture. Sin has come in, little-by-little, so slowly that we’ve hardly noticed, and now we are desensitized to it. Joni Eareckson Tada said it well: "And gradually, though no one remembers exactly how it happened, the unthinkable becomes tolerable. And then acceptable. And then legal. And then applaudable."
I'm glad it was only incense that I got used to that day!
Love and blessings,
Judy Rose Grubaugh