The Gnat of sin

1 John 1:9, If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This verse was part of the weekly woman’s Bible study I attend. I mentioned in one of my earlier blogs about the flower plant my brother gave me this summer. How each day it needed watering and plucking the wilted ones so it would grow. As the weather this week has been cooler, this plant is slowing dying. It’s an annual and blooms in the summer, but I continue to water it and pluck off the wilted ones hoping it will stay a little longer. I learned a lot from this plant. When I first got it, it was full of blooms. I had to be careful not to mistake one that was just starting from one that was dying. When I look at it now, it’s easy to see the ones that need plucking. This brings me to my cup of coffee this morning. As I sat here thinking about the lesson this week, I reached for my coffee and a tiny bug, a gnat, had landed in my cup. I had just poured it. I didn’t want to get up and go get another cup, so I carefully put my finger on the top and removed it. As I did this, the lesson I had been reading came to mind. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins.” Had that little gnat been a fly, I would have immediately poured out the coffee and got another cup. But it was only a speck. God spoke to my heart this morning. Sin isn’t always the fly you get rid of immediately when you see it, but a gnat that you just gently remove. I couldn’t finish my cup of coffee. I kept looking to see if another one had landed in my coffee and I just couldn’t see it. God reminded me, sin is sin. Whether it’s a fly that you see and immediately remove out of your life, or the gnat that you think is okay and didn’t spoil your drink. When we allow, what we think is, the smallest sin, we hinder our growth.