I’ve been thinking deep, philosophical thoughts. (Watch out! We’re entering the danger zone!)

We don’t live in a perfect world. That’s not a surprise to anyone. But, we were supposed to live in a perfect world. When God first created mankind, He put us in the garden of Eden. The garden was a perfect place where we fellowshipped freely with our Creator.

It’s like God built us a house – a perfect, beautiful, peaceful, spotlessly clean house. He created us and put us in that wonderful house, and provided everything we would ever need. Every day he came to our house, and He walked through the house with us, talking to us and enjoying us and pointing out all the cool things He had built into the house to please us. And oh, how we enjoyed His visits! He taught us how to keep the house clean, how to keep it a welcoming, nice, peaceful place.

But one day the doorbell rang. We opened the door and there, on the doorstep, was a door-to-door salesman. He had a huge bag full of wonderful things he wanted to sell us. We already had a whole houseful of wonderful things, beautiful furnishings. But the salesman insisted God hadn’t given us the BEST things, and he was prepared to show us. So we invited him inside our beautiful, shiny, clean house. And that slick-talking salesman opened up his bag. Out ran nasty, disgusting roaches, a million of them. As soon as we saw them swarm out of the bag, we knew we’d made a terrible mistake. But there were so many of them, running all over the place and spreading germs and crawling into the cushions of our beautiful couch, and across our shiny clean counters in the kitchen. The salesman backed up into a corner and snickered as we tried stomping as many of them as we could. But there were just so many! They were everywhere, spreading their nasty, disgusting germs.

We tried to hide all the bugs before God came, but it was useless. God was so sad to see the mess we’d made of our clean, beautiful, perfect house. He showed us how to set out some of those little roach houses to try to keep them at bay. They helped to keep the roaches away from us, but we knew they’d just gone into the walls to hide, and they came running out every so often. Whenever we’d turn on the Light, we’d see them scampering away, leaving a nasty, disgusting trail.

But then God took care of the problem. He sent the Exterminator! Jesus came into the house and set off a bug bomb that seeped into the walls and killed every single bug! WOO HOO! Hallelujah!

Here’s the problem: there are still cockroach bodies hidden in the walls and in the corners and beneath the furniture. They’re dead – defeated. But their corpses still try to dirty up our houses. That nasty salesman is still there, lurking in the shrubbery outside, laughing when we encounter a new cockroach corpse. Our job is to uncover them all, sweep them all out of the corners, and follow God’s directions to make that house clean again. Yay Jesus! (Let’s chant together: Go Jesus! Go Jesus! Go Jesus!)

Here’s the cool thing: one day soon, God is going to snatch that salesman up by the scruff of his neck and lock him away forever. He’s going to bulldoze the house. Yes, He’ll tear it down, and all those ugly, disease-carrying bug corpses will be destroyed. Then he’s going to build a new house (the New Jerusalem!) and furnish it with brand new, clean furnishings. That house is going to be even better than the first one. And it will be spotless, without a single germ.

Do you ever wonder why life isn’t perfect? Why you don’t see perfection in your health, and in your relationships, and in your emotions? That’s because those nasty cockroach corpses are still hanging around, cluttering up your life. They’re dead, but they’re still ugly and they still carry disease. You just hang in there. God’s on his way with the bulldozer, and the construction crew!