Dinged Again

Come, let’s settle this,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are crimson red, they will be like wool.” Isaiah 1:18

Remember to keep your eye on the ball.  That’s a real important truth if you are playing baseball but if you are pulling into your garage…well, there’s more to it than that.

It was a long time ago but trust me I remember it very well. I was coming home from work at the office.  As I was pulling into the driveway, I noticed that my granddaughter Faith, who was only seven at the time, was playing in the garage.  Ever the careful Papa, I stopped to give her plenty of time to get clear of the car.  She was playing with her wagon and was kind enough to move the wagon out of the way too.

Now my garage isn’t very deep, so I have a tennis ball hanging from the ceiling to remind me how far I can pull forward before hitting the wall. It’s a great idea…I probably need to patent it. So, like a cruise ship captain, I carefully began to dock the ship.  I had my eyes on two things.  First, my granddaughter Faith.  She was well out of the way but again, you can’t be too careful.  The other was the tennis ball.  When the ball touched the windshield, it was time to stop.  It was a great plan.  Almost.

You see, something had changed, and I didn’t know it. Unknown to me, Faith had wrapped the cord that was holding the tennis ball around something, and it moved the ball toward the wall and away from the car just about a foot.  So…I watched Faith—check. I watched the ball—check.  The one thing I didn’t watch was the wall.  Oops.

So, and you can see this one coming, I hit the wall.  Now I was going really slow so theoretically I should have survived with little or no damage.  Well, theoretically anyway.  You see, before the wall was a hot water heat radiator.  I had figured that into the equation when I had hung the ball so no deal.  But, and it was a big but, sitting on top of the radiator was a leaf blower.  Now wait…don’t give me that look.  Don’t you don’t store your leaf blower on top of your radiator?  Well anyway, when I hit the radiator, the leaf blower fell onto the hood of my car—my nice shiny, dent-free hood and I gave birth to a nice, large ding—dead center and about a foot up from the front edge. Bummer.

Yup, bummer indeed.  There I was trying to do all the right things and ended up messing up big time.  You probably don’t know this, but I am pretty particular about my car and that ding might as well have been the size of a moon crater. I was devastated. If that ding had been anywhere but there it wouldn’t have been such a big deal but there it was—for all to see and for all to ask about. Can you imagine explaining that one?  My once perfect hood was no longer perfect—and it was obvious.  That’s one thing about dings—they are usually obvious—especially on nice shiny hoods. Sigh.

Did you know we have something in common with my dinged car hood?  Yup, we all have dings.  There’s not a perfect one in the bunch.  The Bible says “All have sinned…”  We are all dinged up.  As a matter of fact, unlike my hood which was perfect, we were born dinged. And not only that.  We constantly get more dings every day. We are like a ding factory. The question now becomes, “what are we going to do about it?”  One thing was obvious, I couldn’t fix that ding and we can’t fix our sin problem either.  So, what’s the answer?  Well, I found the Ding Doctor.

My friend Terry told me about a guy named Butch who could get dings out of doors, hoods, or whatever.  So, I went to see him and amazingly, with a lot of skill, he was able to make that ding disappear—vanish—like it was never there.  After he had worked his magic, I couldn’t thank him enough.  But I know something better than that. There is another “Ding Doctor” who can take care of our sin dings.  His name is Jesus.  No matter how big the failure, no matter how massive the sin—He is ready and willing to forgive us.  And when He gets done…well, believe it or not, you are better than new.  God says in the book of Isaiah which is in the Old Testament part of the Bible “Come, let’s settle this,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are crimson red, they will be like wool.” How about that?

So, if you get a ding in your door or your hood you might want to check out the ding doctor.  If you have managed to ding up your life, and remember we all have, you might want to see THE Ding Doctor.  There is not a life ding He can’t fix or a sin He can’t forgive.  If your ding looks like a total loss—don’t give up.  Trust me, He can take care of it.  He’s got this.  Bro. Dewayne