A Christian songwriter once wrote about the after effects of sin, and the traps of a man returning to his folly. It said in certain terms that no matter the immediate sensations that sin might provide, in the overall, sin is a bright and burning fire that leaves you cold as stone. Sin’s popularity makes you everybody’s friend but ultimately it leaves you desperately alone.

The song continues to say that the price of sin is too high to pay. Having spent more then a fair amount of time in sin, that, certainly is a true statement. The effects of staying in sin, will wear you out, lies, deceit, and misgivings can lead to an erosion of life’s most delicate balances of love, trust and fellowship. Even a supernova born of sin, expends its energy and will burn itself out. In contrary that same supernova born of pureness, will forever burn with a lasting intensity.

In the Book of Genesis, God sees how great man’s wickedness on earth had become and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart were only evil all the time. God was profoundly upset by this. The sins and wickedness of this time enticed man to seek their own pleasures. For the time that it took for God to reach His wits end, man enjoyed the perversions of an evil heart.

Just like what happens in every sinful heart, the lusts and desires were laid to waste. In the great flood God washed away the unrepentant ways of life. He covered the earth with water in an attempt to begin, new again what man had destroyed. Such a devastation was necessary to rend free the sins of mans heart.

In Matthew, the Word says that people’s hearts had become calloused and that our eyes and ears had become closed keeping us from seeing and hearing what was expected of us. A few chapters later, it is explained that out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. I suppose the point is that we are incapable of not sinning, and laying to waste the benefits of trust, love and righteousness. The bright and burning fire, consumes everything in its wake, and just as the flood ravaged the earth so does the sinful fire in us. The time lost trying to recover from the sins of our heart takes from us the ability to enjoy the promises of God.

From the clouds of flood water, God placed a rainbow, a sign, His covenant with us. And from the remains our sinful ways will sprout a root. In the black, charred remains of our transgressions will raise life. It is a symbol of understanding and forgiveness for our nature. Regardless of what the flood has washed away or the fire burned, rainbows shine and life sprouts anew from the ashes of our past……