Starts with a Thread

Over the three-day weekend for my kids from school, I have let myself eat unhealthily.  It stated out slow a small piece of cake here till it got to a very large piece of cake.  Which lead to a coke which I haven’t had in for about six months.  It just started out with giving in a little bit, having the small taste of what I knew I didn’t need.  It like the story I ran across today, it starts small and can grow fast.  Here is the story: An athletic young man stood before his peers. An ordinary piece of sewing thread was cut from a spool and wrapped once around his torso and arms and tied. He was asked to break free from the thread. Like a young Samson in training, he easily broke the thread that bound him. The young man’s peers teased him, “Oooooohhhhhhh,” they chided, in chorus.

A longer piece of thread was wrapped around the young man. This time the thread was wrapped around his body three times. The young man, again, was asked to break free from his bonds. This time, it took real effort on the young man’s behalf, but he broke free of the threads. Again, his friends mockingly cheered, “Woohoo!” The young man struck a body-builders’ pose in response.

Finally, one last, long piece of thread was cut from the spool and wrapped around the young man. This time, the thread was wrapped a dozen times around his body. But this time, as he tried to break free, he struggled and struggled. His friends cheered him on. Soon, the cheers turned to laughter. This young man could not break the thread and finally gave up.

This story can serve as a good warning to us about the power of bad habits. All it took was me to say it will be ok today to get off my diet, which lead to two days, which lead to three.  Do we catch ourselves doing this from time to time?  Today I am stopping and getting back on my diet.  As important as my physical diet is, I need to make sure I never let my spiritual diet slip.  If your spiritual diet is slipping I ask us to stop letting it slip and get back on it today.  So today I have made sure I am on both of my diets and focused on not cheating and losing site of my goals.  This week hope each of look at our spiritual diets and if needed get back on them.  Todd