My children and I are reading Nate Wilson’s new book The Boys of Blur – which has a fabulous cover, by the way! The main character is a kid named Charlie whose biological dad abused the family and whose step-dad Mack is a good guy, a retired pro football guy. At one point they have a conversation about Charlie’s bio dad and Mack had some good things to say.
“Your father made mistakes. We all do. But instead of working to set things right, he chose to protect those mistakes – he let them be. He even fed them, which made them so much worse. Mistakes don’t just hang on the wall like ugly pictures. Mistakes are seeds.” He thumped his chest. “In here. They grow. They take over. You make a mistake, you gotta make it right. Dig that seed out. Old Wiz [Mack’s former coach] used to say, ‘Fruit rots, wood rots, but lazy-ass boys rot the fastest.'”
Beautiful and brilliant imagery. Mistakes are seeds; dig them out or soon there will be a harvest of unrighteousness in our lives. May God grant us grace to keep our eyes fixed on Christ and be diligent to continue rooting out the seeds of our mistakes lest they grow and we rot. For young men in particular, beware pride; beware lust; beware laziness; beware morbid introspection and down-in-the-dumpsness. His divine power has given us all things necessary for life and godliness (2 Pet 1).