“Would you eat your favorite kind of cookie if the tray underneath it had a tiny bit of dog poop on it?” I asked the kids at our party club. I was trying to help them understand why God finds even one sin too odious to permit in his presence.
“Gross!” All but one exclaimed. 10-year-old Lea (name changed) looked thoughtful. “I probably wouldn’t notice because it would just look kind of like chocolate,” she mused.
“Sure!” another teacher (the lady hosting the club in her living room) stepped in to save me (and the illustration). “But you would smell it, and it would certainly taste disgusting!” our club hostess reminded her, sending up a chorus of shudders from everyone else.
“Right!” I exclaimed, casting a grateful look at my fellow teacher. “And that is how God feels about your sin. Even if there’s a bunch of good deeds piled on top, he smells the disgusting thing on the bottom.”
This child and her younger brother when given the chance to respond to Jesus’ offer of salvation in the club, both went back to talk with the club hostess about their sin problem and Jesus’ solution. At the end of club, the hostess approached me, beaming. “They both prayed in their own words to believe in Jesus! They said they’d never done this before, and they obviously understood.”
Praise God for cleaning off something far more disgusting than dog poop from these children’s lives!
–Written by a CEF Chicago Staff
