The line is a dot to you...

This is a line from a popular 1990’s television show. It’s not one of my favorite television shows, I watched it, but it wouldn’t make my top ten list. (I don’t have a top ten list, but now I feel the pressure to make one). It’s from Friends, Joey has a girlfriend that Chandler likes, and Chandler goes out with her behind Joey’s back. Chandler says that he knows he has crossed the line. Joey responds that yes, Chandler did cross the line. In fact, he is so far over the line he can’t even see the line, he yells, “THE LINE IS A DOT TO YOU”.

I found this really funny in a poignant kind of way. I have been so far across the line that the line was a dot to me. I know how it happened. It was one step at a time. I didn’t jump on my Tarzan vine and swing as far away as I could and then jump off the vine. I lowered my standards inch by inch. I changed my conduct and behavior just a little at a time. It started with boredom, then new (wrong) friends, because I was bored. Then the wrong places to hangout, more wrong friends, wrong activities, and even more wrong activities until I wasn’t even close to the line. When I did finally realize how far a way I had gotten, it was a long way back home. By that time I was expecting my son, and had no intention of marrying his father. Heaping mistake after mistake (or sin on top of sin) was not the right way to go, and I knew it. Getting married was not the answer, it would have made me look better, but it wasn’t the right thing to do. At that point, I looked at the line and started back. And that meant leaving friends and activities behind. I knew God had never left me. I had never been alone, but I was so far from where he wanted me to be, it was a rough journey back. Sin doesn’t let go easily.

Sin is enticing. It looks fun (and even is fun) for a period of time. I had a boss who traveled to Switzerland and brought me back a box of chocolates. Swiss’ finest chocolates, they weren’t in a box, they were in a little treasure chest. They were covered in white chocolate, milk chocolate and dark chocolate. They were round, square, rectangles, triangles, swirled, drizzled, they were beautiful. The girl at the next desk and I decided to try them. One bite, and I’m bent over my trash can spitting and I look up at my co-worker and she is rubbing her tongue with a napkin. My beautiful box of Swiss chocolates was laced with fine liqueur. (I’m not much into fine liqueur or any liqueur for that matter). Translated, they were nasty. Worse yet, it took a long time to get rid of the after taste. It kind of stuck to your tongue and the smell lingered too.
Sin is like this. Very tempting, presented like it’s a great time and all the cool kids are doing these things. But when you get to the heart of it, it’s a different story. And it does leave an after taste, and eventually, it ends in ruin. Ruined lives. But God builds from ruins. The God that restored life to dead bodies in the Bible and has promised to restore life to those who have died and their spirits are in Heaven, if he can breathe life in once, and then again, he can restore a ruined life. Even use it for His glory. There is no life so broken that it can’t be healed. The healing for me was not in putting things back together the way they had been. It was in putting one foot in front of the other as I made my way back to the line. It was and continues to be in allowing God to use my ruined life, not pretending I had or have a perfect one, which is what I want. Perfect life, perfect husband, perfect kids. But I got none of that. The only perfection in my life is God and as I have been reminded in the little things over the last couple days, he orders my steps. He makes no mistakes. And he never leaves me.

I have been reading Ezekiel, it’s a book that shows God’s judgment on His chosen nation of Israel, (and his purpose and plan to save the whole world). Israel has made themselves unclean in their worship, and God has removed himself from them and he is judging them with national destruction. But God’s faithfulness is shown, as he revives and restores his people again.
Our God rebuilds from the ruins. And the last verse of Ezekiel ends with “and the name of the city from that time on will be: THE LORD IS THERE.” I think, and this is just my thought because I’m no theologue, of the powerfulness of the Book of Ezekiel covering the ruin and destruction and ending with the description of Heaven. I definitely want to live in the city called “THE LORD IS THERE”.

I praise God that he is a God of mercy and forgiveness, redemption and restoration. I am so thankful that he rebuilds from the ruins, and builds beautiful from the ruins. I want to walk as close to the line as possible. I never want to drift again. And if I do, I pray that something, someone, will turn me around quickly. I never want to be in the place where the line is a dot to me.