Are We Beavers?

At our cottage, there is a little hike that gets us to a clearing that was once a small lake. The lake was the result of a few busy beavers that had blocked a small stream. Over a few decades the stream became a lake that we called 'Beaver Lake' for lack of anything else more original!

One summer night, we had a tremendous amount of rain in a few short hours.  The water breached the top of the dam and started to flow over it. The beaver dam that had been built over many years was destroyed leaving a gaping hole in the damn that had been 5 to 6 feet wide, 30 to 40 feet long and up to 6 feet high.

Natural Beaver

An impressive sight being able to walk all around it and see the work that was put into it.

And now the lake no longer exists.

As impressive as the beaver dam was, it wasn't natural.  It wasn't meant to be there.  The field that now exists, was once full of trees. With the dam and the collection of water, all of the natural vegetation slowly died and disappeared. But now with the dam gone, there is a field of dead stumps, rocks and little streams.

Are we beavers?

If you picture it, our heart is like the stream.  God's love is meant to pour through us like water.  It's not to be stored up, it is to be reflected in our daily actions towards our family members, friends and even complete strangers.

Sin becomes the branches for the damn.  We are the busy beavers hoarding the sin and building the dam into an impressive wall that causes God's love to be a trickle instead of the unending flow it is meant to be.

Sin isn't meant to stay in our hearts.  It isn't natural.  God didn't have this in His plan for us.  It is our choice to hold onto the sin.

And like it or not, the sin often becomes an obsession like the 'precious' ring Gollum so loved in the Lord of the Rings.

Why do we hold onto sin?

That is a question I am still grappling with.

Often, I know I'm making a poor choice but I continue to do it just "because".  

Sometimes I continue to sin because not sinning would be admitting that I was sinning in the first place! How is that for messed up logic?!

The biggest challenge is that I don't think it is a sin.  I believe LIES.  The lies I tell myself to justify the sin. The lies that are generated from social conditioning.  The perverse reasoning I apply to make it seem okay.  Lies that are half-truths and create confusion more than clarity. The lies that make me believe I am doing good when I am not.

How does the dam break?

Like the beaver dam, it often takes a torrential storm in our life to break the dams in our hearts.  A storm that breaches the walls of our self-made dam to the point where we think we have lost everything.

The loss of a job.
The breakdown of a marriage/long relationship.
A financial crisis.
The death of a loved one.
A lengthy illness.
A failed adoption.
Sexual abuse.
Infidelity.
Addictions.

When the dam does break, we have the choice to rebuild the dam or to keep the stream free of debris.

We have the choice to use the pieces of that destruction to build yet another dam;  the hurt, the anger, the bitterness, the resentment.

Or we can let the pieces float away.

What happened to Beaver Lake?

Caspian (our dog) surveying
the remnants of Beaver Lake.

Our summer walks to the remnants of Beaver Lake, brings us into a new world.

What was an unnatural field of stumps and rocks is now a field full of flowers. We can sit and close our eyes listening to thousands of bees busy doing their work.  Or breath deeply and enjoy the fragrance of all the flowers.

The destruction of the unnatural has been turned into something beautiful.

God does the same thing with our hearts.  With the sin gone, we become new creations.  Our slates are wiped clean. The result is a joy that is contagious and liberating.

Do you have a dam that needs to be cleared?

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Thank you for taking the time to read one of the many Wandering Thoughts that God has been putting on my heart. If this has touched you in anyway, I would love to hear from you. You can leave a comment below and share your own personal revelations; or send me a personal message on Google+ or Facebook.

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Have a wonderful day.