Life Through the Lens: Check your faith – and your elastic

This post is the author’s personal opinion.

Before my joints decided they could no longer stand the strain, I loved ballroom dancing.

Ladies resplendent in long, flowing ball gowns; gentlemen gallant in their suits; all waltzing, dipping in time with their partners and the notes wafting out from the orchestra’s instruments.

I was sitting this dance out – then it happened.

One of the swirling matrons paused and lifted her ball gown a few centimetres with the great aplomb that can only come with class and good breeding.

There, encircling her nylon-clad ankles were ... her knickers!

She stepped out of the undergarment with barely a pause and remarkable agility.

Then, with a flick of a sequin-encrusted dance shoe that would have made a soccer player leap in appreciation, she sent the offending garment across two metres of the dance floor, between other twirlers, and scored a goal under the seat next to me.

Obviously the elastic had given out.

I wonder when she last considered the state of that elastic.

How easy is it to become complacent and take for granted something – or someone – who was once important to us?

Do you have a friend or relation that you used to see or call regularly, but now it has been so long since contact it doesn’t seem to matter?

Has your partner, who was the wonderful one you couldn’t wait to see, become the person who is just there?

What of the child, once so much a part of your life, now having left home, making their way in the world: the one you regularly, eagerly phoned or texted?

Sadly there are people in our lives who we have taken for granted either now or at some time.

What about Jesus: the one who tells us he never stops thinking about us, planning what is best for us and making those plans a reality, even when we may have forgotten him, taken his love for granted (Jeremiah 29:11).

Do you still daily talk to him, talk over what’s bothering you, tell him how you look forward to sharing the day with him; or has he become just a name in a book seldom opened (Ephesians 6:18)?

Next time you put your knickers on, check the elastic and think about how strong your relationship is with the God of love and his son, Jesus, who holds you up every day – even if you are unaware of him doing it.

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