Cleansing

Firefighters from three departments responded to a report of a house on fire in the Cherry Grove area of Vancouver, Washington. When an engine from Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue (CCFR) arrived, fire personnel announced there would be “access issues” to the single-story residence because of clutter.

Fire and smoke were visible from the windows in the kitchen and living room area of the home, but the yard around the house was cluttered with appliances, vehicles, and storage bins. That made it difficult for firefighters to quickly stretch hose lines to the structure.

A news release stated: “Once firefighters were able to clear out some of the clutter and make access to the house, the fire had grown too large to safely make an offensive interior attack. In addition, the interior spaces of the house were also very cluttered with high piles of clothing, storage bins, appliances, furniture, and other items.”

Fire Chief John Nohr said, “Normally in these types of fires, we bring in a track hoe to tear apart the piles. Due to the clutter in the yard, we weren’t able to get heavy equipment in there to help with extinguishment.”

Extreme clutter is dangerous for firefighters, especially when mixed with a smoky environment, because responders can get lost in the clutter. The piles of items can also tip over, crush, or entrap firefighters.

Nohr said, “In 37 years in the fire service, this is one of the most extremely cluttered homes I’ve ever seen. I feel for the family that has lost all of their possessions, but I also feel for the firefighters who put themselves at significant risk trying to fight a fire in a house this full.”

Possible Preaching Angle:
Like houses, a clean life is more than just convenient. It could also be the difference between a close call and destruction. Honest confession of sin provides the opportunity to clean out your stuff now. You don't want to try to desperately clean up in an emergency. New Years is an excellent time to reevaluate your life.

As the clock strikes midnight on December 31, many people may share a kiss with their significant other, cheer, and use noisemakers to celebrate a new year. And sure, a kiss at midnight and making noise are some of the common new year traditions that are said to bring you luck, they certainly not the only ones.

Here are some of the most unique, and maybe even lesser known, New Year’s superstitions from various countries around the world that are thought to help bring good luck and ward off the bad for the new year.

Walk Around with an Empty Suitcase - In Spain and Latin American the custom is supposed to welcome new experiences and a year filled with traveling.

Throw Furniture from a Window - In some European cultures, you can find people throwing couches, fridges and more from their window when the clock strikes midnight. This symbolizes doing away with the old and welcoming in the new.

Leave Windows and Doors Open - Leaving your doors and windows open on New Year's Eve is said to let out the old year.

Break Dishes - In Denmark it is considered good luck and a sign of friendship to break dishes and plates on the homes of those closest to you.

Clean the House - Many people around the world believe in starting New Year's Day with a clean house in order to avoid carrying the old or dirt of last year into the new year.

Burn Photos - An Ecuadorian superstition calls for burning photos of old memories before midnight in order to make way for the new things to come.

Possible Preaching Angle:
While we don’t participate in worldly superstitions, these traditions can be an interesting way to remind believers that the Bible promises them a fresh start every morning with God (“new every morning” Lam. 3:22-23) and not just on New Year’s Day.

For the past 100 years, the 90,000 residents of Santa Fe, New Mexico, have participated in a unique annual ritual: the burning of Zozobra. With a budget of just over one million dollars, the city constructs a towering 50-foot papier-mâché effigy, which is set ablaze as the crowd chants, “Burn him!” The purpose is to symbolically purge the community of its collective anxieties.

As described by the New York Times, Zozobra is imagined as a beast from the nearby mountains, lured into town under the guise of a celebration. Dressed in formal attire, Zozobra “thrusts the town into darkness and takes away ‘the hopes and dreams of Santa Fe’s children.’” The townspeople attempt to subdue him, but it’s only when the Fire Spirit-summoned by the unity of the citizens-arrives that Zozobra is ultimately defeated by fire.

The ritual’s goal is to literally incinerate the worries and troubles of Santa Fe’s residents. Before the burning, people stuff the effigy with written notes of their anxieties, medical bills, report cards, parking tickets, and even loved ones’ ashes. The act of burning these items serves as a powerful symbol of letting go.

Fire, both historically and in this ritual, represents destruction and renewal. It “eliminates dead vegetation and enriches soil, promoting new growth; it rejuvenates via destruction.” By channeling fire through ritual, people hope to gain control over the cycle of death and rebirth, using flames as a metaphorical reset button. The burning of Zozobra unites the community in optimism, offering a chance to vanquish the undesirable and begin anew each year.

Do you have a deep, dark secret?

Edgar Allan Poe’s 1843 short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” describes a man slowly going mad because of a dark secret. The narrator recounts a murder he has committed, of an old man with a filmy blue “vulture eye,” whose regard the murderer simply could not endure.

The narrator-killer hides the old man’s body under the floorboards of his house, but then he begins to hear the beating of the dead man’s heart beneath his feet. The sound—clearly a metaphor for the murderer’s tormenting shame and guilt—grows louder and louder. In the end, the narrator can stand the thumping no longer; seeking relief, he confesses his crime to the police.

Most, if not all, of us have guilty secrets, secrets we have never told anyone. Psychologists call the secrets we keep about ourselves “self-concealment.” Although what you self-conceal might feel uniquely shameful, the experience of carrying a guilty secret really doesn’t vary that much across the population. Michael Slepian, a professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia University, maintains a website called KeepingSecrets, which organizes into various categories the things that people are hiding from others. The most common secrets anonymously cataloged involve infidelity or indiscretion. In short: Your own tell-tale heart probably involves love and sex.

The owners of Captain's Quarters Riverside Grille in Kentucky have come up with a unique strategy to protect their restaurant from floodwaters. As the Ohio River floodwaters encroached, co-owner Andrew Masterson shared their plan: intentionally flooding the building with clean water to keep the dirty floodwaters out. In a Facebook live video, Masterson demonstrated how he and his team used sinks, faucets, and a well water pump to fill the restaurant with about six feet of fresh water. "We disconnected kitchen equipment and electrical panels beforehand," Masterson explained.

The method relies on maintaining a barrier of clean water to prevent the muddy floodwater from entering the building. Masterson believes that this strategy, if successful, could save the restaurant from costly cleanup. "If this works, it will save us a lot of time and money in the future," he said.

Despite the ingenuity of the plan, Masterson expressed concerns about the rising water levels, noting that they could still breach the restaurant through windows, doors, or ductwork if the floodwaters exceed six feet.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In a similar we can guard our hearts and minds by filling it full of pure things. God wants to fill us up with His Spirit so that we’re not overcome by the world’s evil.

Your stainless-steel refrigerator is hard enough to keep smudge free but consider what it costs in time and materials to clean a stainless-steel truck.

Matt McClure began to worry about how to keep his new $100,000 Tesla Cybertruck clean before he even owned it. He spent hours researching the internet for tips on keeping the exterior clean.

One Reddit user exclaimed, “WD-40 is the way to go.” No, retorted another – glass cleaner is the safest option. Adhesive-remover Goo Gone has its proponents too, while others swear by Bar Keepers Friend.

Chris Leiter also weighed in. In daily use, he often worries about “the stainless-steel panel above the front bumper becoming a massive graveyard for bugs.” At one point guessed there were upward of 3,000 squashed bugs on the truck front. (Seeking a more accurate count, he later submitted a photo of the bug massacre to ChatGPT, which estimated about 4,600 deceased bugs.)

McClure then shelled out $500 for cleaning products and settled on a multistep process to wash and coat the truck. His step-by step process is as follows: Wash with car shampoo. Apply a stainless-steel rust remover. Clean with Bar Keepers Friend and Windex. Dry thoroughly. Wipe the vehicle down with isopropyl alcohol. Finish with ProtectaClear, a coating for metal that helps hide fingerprints.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Customers might keep a Cybertruck for a few years, but your soul is forever. There is a song that asks, “What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.” Jesus paid an expensive price to make our souls as white as snow, but He did it out of love, for all time, and He offers it for free to all who will follow Him.

Saying farewell to yesterday might be a challenge for some, but not for the numerous New Yorkers who bid a traditional farewell to 2023 in Times Square ahead of the big New Year's Eve celebration. At the 17th annual Good Riddance Day Thursday, bad memories were burned – literally.

Good Riddance Day is inspired by a Latin American tradition in which New Year’s revelers stuffed dolls with objects representing bad memories before setting them on fire.

In Times Square, attendees wrote down their bad memories on pieces of paper. "COVID," "Cancer," “Our broken healthcare system,” “Spam calls and emails,” “Bad coffee,” and “Single Use Plastics,” were some of the entries.

Every December 28, this event gives people the opportunity to write down everything they want to leave in the past and destroy any unpleasant, unhappy, and unwanted memories – so that they can toss them into an incinerator and watch them vanish.

Possible Preaching Angle:

What painful experience, memory, or consequence caused by sin would you like to leave behind in the New Year? This is a reality for the believer “Because of the loving devotion of the LORD we are not consumed, for His mercies never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness!” (Lam 3:22-23). With Paul we can say “Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead” (Phil. 3:13).

Stephen Steele writes about sculptor Gillian Genser who was experiencing headaches, vomiting, hearing loss, confusion, and suicidal thoughts. For years, doctors were baffled by what was afflicting her. They asked if she was working with anything toxic, and she assured them she wasn’t. She told them that she only worked with natural materials. They prescribed antipsychotics and antidepressants, but nothing seemed to help.

Finally, she saw a specialist who tested her blood for heavy metals and found high levels of arsenic and lead in her system. She was shocked, but still confused—how had she ingested those dangerous compounds? Finally, she talked to one doctor who was horrified to hear that she had been grinding up mussel shells for the past fifteen years to use in her sculpture. She had no idea that mussels can accumulate toxins over years of feeding in polluted waters.

The most fascinating thing about the story is who the sculpture was meant to be. It was Adam, the first man. Genser recognized the irony herself. She said: “It’s very interesting and ironic that Adam, as the first man, was so toxic. He poisoned me. Doesn’t that make sense?”

Steele comments,

And it makes perfect sense, because that is what Adam, the first man, did to all of us. He poisoned us. He rebelled against God – and we are contaminated by that rebellion. The message of the Bible, however, is that a second Adam – Jesus Christ – has come to cleanse us from this in-built corruption, as well as the other poisonous thoughts, words, and deeds we add to it during our lives. It doesn’t mean those who trust him will be perfect. Like Gesner, we will suffer the effects of Adam’s poison for the rest of our lives – but it will no longer define us forever.

Since 1953, when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit, over 4,000 people have successfully climbed Mount Everest. Unfortunately, the climbers have also littered the mountainside with garbage, such as used oxygen bottles, ropes, and tents. Today, Everest is so overcrowded and full of trash that it has been called the “world’s highest garbage dump.”

No one knows exactly how much waste is on the mountain, but it is in the tons. Litter is spilling out of glaciers, and camps are overflowing with piles of human waste. Climate change is causing snow and ice to melt, exposing even more garbage that has been covered for decades. All that waste is trashing the natural environment, and it poses a serious health risk to everyone who lives in the Everest watershed.

Both governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have attempted—and are attempting—to clean up the mess on Mount Everest. In 2019, the Nepali government launched a campaign to clear 10,000 kilograms (22,000 pounds) of trash from the mountain. They also started a deposit initiative. Anyone visiting Mount Everest has to pay a $4,000 deposit, and the money is refunded if the person returns with eight kilograms (18 pounds) of garbage—the average amount that a single person produces during the climb.

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) Legacy - We should all pause for a moment and think, “In my climb up the ladder of success, what am I leaving behind? Will others have to pick through my "garbage"?2) Sinfulness; Cleansing – We all have a filthy old nature which is desperately in need of the deep cleaning and spiritual renewal that only God’s Spirit can perform. “He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).

Your brain is planning to remind you of the stupid thing you did 15 years ago in the early hours of tomorrow morning. It reckons on waking you up with a jolt after only three hours of sleep. Then it will spend much of the rest of the night replaying a list your greatest (mistakes).

The spongy grey lump which sits between your ears is planning a real “greatest hits” retrospective which will include every dumb thing you’ve ever said. That time you got it completely wrong with the person you really fancied and doomed yourself to a life of regret and loneliness. Every stupid … choice you’ve ever made and how people are only your friends because they pity you.

It expects this will be complete by about 6:30am, by which time you’ll have to get up and go to work and pretend you’re just fine. When asked, your brain said it intends to do this randomly at intervals for the rest of your life.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Since no one is without sin (Ps. 143:2; Rom. 3:10), you will have many regrets, shameful memories, and sins to ponder late at night (Ps. 32:1-6). Only in Christ can we find true forgiveness, release from a guilty conscience, and the promise that “God’s mercy is new every morning” (Lam. 3:23-24).

Unless you’re Chuck Norris, Googling yourself is rarely a pleasant experience. Finding information that is confidential, intimately personal, or personally identifying on a Google search results page is truly horrifying.

Besides the social media accounts that you may have left on “Public settings” or the shopping records that were leaked when a retailer got hacked, there are even more nefarious methods that could land your data on the most popular search engine on Earth. And in a world where the Internet records everything and forgets nothing—every online photo, status update, social media post, and blog entry by and about us can be stored forever.

Now, Google has introduced a new privacy feature that enables users to scrub their personal information from web searches. The new “remove result button” enables users to request that pages containing their phone numbers, home addresses, or email addresses be removed from appearing in searches.

Users may also request the removal of results containing their social security numbers, bank account and credit-card numbers, and medical records. Users also may remove information that is “outdated” or “illegal.”

Google said in a statement, “It is a way to help you easily control whether your personally identifiable information can be found in Search results.” Google stressed that the tool is designed only to allow users to better control the accessibility of their most personal information, and not to censor more general web content.

Although Google cannot remove content from websites it does not control, it accounts for over 80% of all web searches, so having Google remove the offending page from their results greatly lowers the page’s search visibility.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The web is a place where information lives forever and nothing ever is forgotten. This should be a reminder to everyone that God’s books record everything: words, thoughts, deeds (Rev. 20:11-12). The only way to “remove result” is through confession (1 John 1:9) and the grace of God which applies the expunging effect of the blood of Christ (Col. 2:11-15). New Years is a good time to remember that God can give us a fresh start every morning (Lam. 3:22-23).

French atheist Guillaume Bignon grew up in a loving family in France. He did well in school and landed a job as a computer scientist in finance. He also excelled in sports, growing to be six feet four inches, and played volleyball in a national league, traveling the country every weekend for the games. All in all, he was happy with his life. The chances of ever hearing the gospel—let alone believing it—were incredibly slim.

While vacationing in the Caribbean he met an attractive young woman. She mentioned that she believed in God and believed that sex belonged in marriage. This was a problem to him, so his new goal in life was to disabuse his girlfriend of her beliefs which were standing in the way of sex. He started thinking: “What good reason was there to think God exists? But, if I was going to refute Christianity, I first needed to know what it claimed. So, I picked up a Bible.” He also prayed, “If there is a God, then here I am. Why don’t you go ahead and reveal yourself to me? I’m open.”

A week or two after his unbelieving prayer, one of his shoulders started to fail, without any evident injury. The doctor couldn’t see anything wrong, but he was told that he needed to rest his shoulder and to stop playing volleyball for a couple of weeks.

Against my will, I was now off the courts. With my Sundays available, I decided I would go to a church to see what Christians do when they get together. I drove to an evangelical congregation in Paris, visiting it as I would a zoo: to see exotic animals that I had read about in books but had never seen in real life.

After the service he hurried to the exit door to avoid all contact with people and the pastor. But as he reached the door a chilling blast went up from his stomach to his throat. He heard himself saying: “This is ridiculous. I have to figure this out.” So, he closed the door, and went straight to the pastor. Bignon said, “So, you believe in God?” “Yes,” the pastor said, smiling. “So how does that work out?” I asked. “We can talk about it,” he said.

After most of the people left, they went to his office and spoke for hours. Bignon bombarded the pastor with questions, who patiently and intelligently explained his worldview. Bignon writes, “My unbelieving prayers shifted to, ‘God, if you are real, you need to make it clear so I can jump in and not make a fool of myself.’”

But instead of a light from heaven, God reactivated his conscience. He remembered a particularly sinister misdeed and God brought it back to his mind in full force. Bignon writes:

I was struck with an intense guilt, and disgusted at the thought of what I had done and the lies I had covered it with. All of a sudden, the quarter dropped. That is why Jesus had to die: Me. He took upon himself the penalty that I deserved, so that in God’s justice, my sins would be forgiven—by grace as a gift, rather than by my righteous deeds or religious rituals. He died so that I may live. I placed my trust in Jesus, and asked him to forgive me. This, in short, is how God takes a French atheist and makes a Christian theologian out of him.

Editor’s Note: Guillaume Bignon went on to obtain a master’s in New Testament studies. In the process, he met a wonderful woman, got married, had two children, and attained a PhD in philosophical theology.

In an issue of CT Pastors Kelli Trujillo writes:

As we drove through northern Arizona’s Coconino National Forest during our family road trip this summer, we found ourselves unexpectedly and unnervingly close to an active wildfire. Plumes of smoke alerted us to hot spots nearby where fire crews worked to contain the blaze. We occasionally saw flames spreading among the ponderosa pines near the roadside as we traveled. We gazed sadly at areas of the forest that were completely blackened, now populated only by charred, barren trunks.

It looked like death—and the fire certainly brought danger and loss. But for a ponderosa pine forest, fire can also bring life. What looks like destruction can actually be crucial to the ecosystem’s life cycle, as low-intensity fires clear out the underbrush and enrich the soil with nutrients. Other ecosystems are similar; in fact, wildfire’s intense heat is necessary to release some seeds from their resin coating and activate other seeds from their dormancy. The source of destruction can also be a catalyst for new life.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Often God must prune (John 15:2) or allow us to pass through refining fires (1 Pet. 1:6-7) in order to stimulate new growth in us. Though painful, these cleansing times are necessary as a catalyst for new life and progress in our sanctification (Rom. 8:29).

Rabbis in Israel have spent many years searching for a qualified red heifer. Finally in September of 2022, a Texas man has delivered five red heifers to four Israeli rabbis so the young cows can be slaughtered and burned to produce the ash necessary for a ritual purification prescribed in Numbers 19:2–3.

Some Jews believe the ritual is a step toward the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Some Christians believe that “third temple” will set the stage for the Antichrist.

Editor’s Note: The red heifers must be monitored for defects by the rabbis until they are three-years-old. At that time, if unblemished, they would be suitable for use as sacrifices in the red heifer ritual. The Mishnah, which is a written embodiment of Jewish oral tradition, teaches that only nine red heifers were sacrificed from the time of Tabernacle worship until the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 AD.

The Ganges River is one of the world’s largest fresh water outlets, after the Amazon and the Congo. The headwaters emerge from a glacier high in the western Himalayas, and then drops down steep mountain canyons to India’s fertile northern plain. Just after it merges with the Brahmaputra, the Ganges empties into the Bay of Bengal. It supports more than a quarter of India’s 1.4 billion people, all of Nepal, and part of Bangladesh.

But sadly, the Ganges has also long been one of the world’s most polluted rivers. The river is befouled by poisonous bi-products from hundreds of factories and towns. Arsenic, chromium, and mercury combine with the hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage that flow into the river on a daily basis.

But despite countless studies and evidence proving the river's polluted state, environmentalists have gained little traction in cleaning up the river. Why?

The Ganges River is a sacred waterway worshipped by a billion Hindus as Mother Ganga, a living goddess with power to purify the soul, and to cleanse itself. A recent article in National Geographic explains: “There is this belief that the river can clean itself. If the river can clean itself, then why should we have to worry about it? Many people say the river cannot be polluted; it can go on forever.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

False gods are capable of cleaning neither themselves or their worshippers. Only Jesus can purify the pollution of the human heart.

Author, songwriter, business owner, and professor Dave Yauk shares how after his life went into a tailspin, until he found Christ:

I was born and raised in a Christian home. My great-great-grandfather was Louis Talbot, one of the founders of Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology, and a preacher who worked closely alongside Billy Graham.

Yet despite this lineage of faith, I grew up as a “moralistic therapeutic deist.” I believed loosely in a divine mind that created the world, and I believed that this being would want us to be good and nice to each other. But I knew this “thing” wasn’t especially involved in my life.

I attended my family’s church until I was 11 years old. In that time, I acquired a certain cynicism about religion and ministry. In many ways, ministry became an idol in my home, and it often kept us from being a close family. Our home life was emotionally arid and devoid of intimacy, and I grew to hate whatever god would allow this.

Around age 17, I began my first serious romantic relationship. But this girl quickly became my idol. It only took a few months before I was pouring my anger onto her. I became what I had vowed never to become: an abuser.

My life went into a tailspin. I entered a 10-month depression. Not a day went by without thoughts of killing myself. I was desperate to learn how to love and be loved. So I studied psychology and read ancient holy books. One remained unopened: the Bible.

But one day, I opened a book that posed a question I couldn’t answer. The author asked, “Do you have a desire to be perfectly loved?” That’s impossible! No one can love us perfectly. And yet the author probed deeper, acknowledging that we still desire this sort of perfect love, even though no one on earth can provide it.

This was the first moment I ever entertained the possibility of a personal god. I finally opened my Bible, and almost instantly I came upon John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Suddenly it all made sense. I understood how Jesus differed from all the other religious leaders I’d encountered in my reading. Jesus sacrificed everything to come down to us!

In that moment I finally met Jesus. Becoming a Christian didn’t make my life any easier. Immediately after Christ entered my heart, he started dealing with my sin. He led me down the dark path of confronting my horrendous addictions. He revealed a stubborn tendency toward lying and deception and a violent temper burning with white-hot flames.

More and more, I came to understand why I needed Jesus’ love. It was one thing to receive the perfect love that every human being desires. It was quite another to know he had offered this perfect love while I was still a wretched sinner. When I contemplated the weight of the horror my sin had caused, it drove me to a deeper humility. The more I understood my status as a beloved son of God, bought by the precious blood of Jesus, the more I learned to welcome the Holy Spirit into my life as my comforter, counselor, convicter, and confidant.

Beginning in 2019, the entire globe became immersed in the COVID-19 pandemic that has so massively disrupted our daily routines. And there is an understandable obsession with physical cleanliness, which is keeping pace with the spread of the virus itself. Everywhere we look are signs demanding that we regularly wash our hands and refrain from touching our faces. Personal hygiene has become paramount.

In the early stages of the pandemic, we heard of certain individuals who were hoarding a wide variety of hand cleansers and then selling them at exorbitant prices. At offices, stores, and public places are numerous containers of disinfectant wipes that we are expected to apply generously to all surfaces and objects. The disinfectant claims to kill cold and flu viruses and virtually all bacteria within fifteen seconds.

Needless to say, the concern in the wake of COVID-19 is physi­cal health. External cleanliness to guard us against infection is the goal. It is common sense to take steps to protect ourselves from such outbreaks of disease. But to put this crisis in an eternal perspective, the worst that COVID-19 can do is take your physical life. Any form of physical infection from a lethal virus can do only so much.

But there is a worse virus circulating in our world which is 100 percent fatal. It is the virus of sin, contracted from spiritual rebellion and its eternal consequences for people is far more severe. It is staggering to think that so many people obsess over their physical welfare but give little or no thought to the health of their soul.

“O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am! Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah” (Ps. 39:4-5).

Jen Wilkin writes:

When my parents entered their latter years, they took up a new hobby: keeping chickens. At the height of their enthusiasm, they tended 21 chickens in a hen house—20 chickens, that is, and one noisy rooster. Roosters crow and crow. They crow every morning, and they crow all morning. They crow to announce another day, but they continue crowing as long as it is called “today.”

Roosters make a notable appearance in the Bible. All four Gospels record Peter’s famous three-time betrayal of Jesus punctuated by the crowing of a rooster, just as Jesus had prophesied. All three synoptic Gospels say Peter “wept bitterly” at the sound.

Our senses are powerful memory holders. Smells … tastes … sounds, too, attach themselves to memories. I imagine what kind of memory the rooster’s crow evoked for Peter. Every dawn after that first terrible morning of betrayal, the proclamation of his bitter guilt would have rung afresh in his ears. Carried in the crowing would have been the memory of his colossal failure. Whatever his relationship had been with Jesus, whatever his calling, it appears to be finished.

“I’m going out to fish,” he announces to his companions (John 21:3). They fish all night and catch nothing. But just as day is breaking, a sound ripples across the water. A voice. The announcement of a miracle: Try the other side of the boat. Recognition dawns. As the others haul in fish as fast as they can, Peter hurls himself into the sea and thrashes toward shore. There sits Jesus, serving up a fresh breakfast menu: Restoration. Forgiveness. It is finished.

I wonder, as the two conversed, could Peter hear in the surrounding countryside the sound of roosters? I can’t say. But … I suspect that every morning thereafter, Peter affixed a new memory to that clarion call. The sound of homecoming. Fear not. Glad tidings. Each day, the sound that had announced new-morning guilt now spoke a better word. All hail the rooster, that fine-feathered herald of forgiveness, that megaphone of new-morning mercies.

Possible Preaching Angle:

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). What memory of past guilt announces itself to you at every turn? Friend, hear the annunciation of your emancipation: Morning has broken, and with it, fresh mercy.

A farmer's sheep and pig had escaped. Together they had found a weak rail in the fence and had pressed upon it until it broke under their weight. Seeing their opportunity, they quickly bolted from the field and began to explore their new and unfamiliar surroundings.

It did not take long for the farmer to notice that two of his animals were missing and to set out to find them. But the animals had wandered far and had not left much of a trail behind them. Day soon turned to night and after resting fitfully, he resumed his search in the morning. The animals had now been gone for more than 24 hours and he began to wonder what could possibly have happened to them.

It was in the afternoon of the second day that he began to hear a distant bleating, the sound of his sheep crying out. He then began to follow the sound as it led toward a nearby bog. And it was there that he found his missing sheep and his missing pig. Both had fallen into a deep ditch, both had become coated in muck, both were unable to scramble out. But where the pig had been content to wallow in the mud, the sheep had known to bleat pathetically until the farmer had come to rescue it, to lift it out, and to cleanse it.

Then, said the farmer,

If you are ever deceived into a sin and overtaken by a weakness, don’t lose heart. Go at once to your compassionate Savior. Tell Him in the simplest words the story of your fall and the sorrow you feel. Ask Him to wash you at once and to restore your soul. For if a sheep and a sow fall into a ditch, the sow wallows in it, but the sheep bleats pathetically until she is cleansed by her master. Be the sheep, my friend, and not the pig.

According to Tik Tok user Allison Wit, her recent dream honeymoon had a surprise ending. Unfortunately, it was not a good surprise. In a series of videos that racked up tens of thousands of views, Allison explained that she and her husband took a vacation to Barbados and had a great time. Only after they returned did they realize something was wrong when her husband’s feet started showing signs of a strange itchy rash.

After being referred to a doctor specializing in infectious diseases, they found out the awkward truth. Apparently, the combination of new flip-flops that gave his feet blisters and a beach with a number of cats created an opening for a type of hookworm that’s normally found in cat feces. The man went on vacation and came home with worms in his feet.

Nevertheless, Allison and her husband’s saga came with a happy ending--their insurance covered the $5,000 treatment. On reflection, she still loved her time in Barbados and wouldn’t mind going back. Many of her fellow Tik-Tok users, however, were less than enthused about the prospect of a tropical vacation. For example, Chloe Amerson wrote: "New fear unlocked."

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sin can burrow its way in to our habits and motivations, even in situations that seem innocent and harmless. Only with consistent watchfulness and cleansing can we free ourselves from these unwanted spiritual parasites.