Ufos In The Fridge

UFOs in the Fridge

Bible Blast: Read Psalm 139:11-12

Even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you.

Psalm 139:12

Cleaning out the fridge is one of the most disgusting jobs. The first step is removing everything from the fridge. For the most part, that’s not too terrible. I usually find expired bottles of salad dressing and maybe a rotting bag of lettuce. But always, always, always there is one container I’ll call the UFO—Unidentified Food Object.

The UFO is usually found inside a plastic container. When I remove the UFO from the fridge, I take it to the sink and hold my breath. When the lid is pulled back, a weird, whitish, greenish, purplish fuzz reveals itself, along with a wretched smell. Quickly, I toss it down the garbage disposal. I often can’t tell what the food was before it turned into a UFO. Baby carrots? Brussels sprouts? Soup?

Sometimes I treat sin kind of like that UFO in the fridge. If I’ve done something wrong, I have a choice: I can either confess that sin to God right away, or I can ignore it and the guilt I feel about it, hoping it will just disappear. That’s a lot like sticking something in a sealed container and shoving it way to the back of the fridge!

What happens to sin when we hide it away? It makes it very difficult to have a close relationship with Jesus. David talked about how sin gets in the way of prayers in Psalm 66:18: “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened” (NIV). Jesus and sin can’t mix.

You may forget a sin that you “stuffed away.” Like the UFO in the fridge, you may even forget where the sin came from, but God remembers. He will keep bringing it up until you finally “get it out of the fridge and dump it down the garbage disposal”—meaning you confess your sin to God and turn away from doing it again. Once you do that, he throws your “UFO” as far as the east is from the west (see Psalm 103:12).

Girl Gab: Just for fun, go to your fridge right now and see if you have any Unidentified Food Objects! If you do, have fun holding your noses and dumping it out. Then perhaps take a moment to see if you need to clean out anything in your hearts!