Callous and Unfeeling

 

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:17-24 ESV).

 

Many of you have seen my posts in other places with pictures of some of the things I have made through the years. The picture today is not really “making anything,” except perhaps a mess! All the wood shavings on the floor by the lathe were produced in the making of a decorative bowl. I don’t have a dust collector that can be connected to this machine, but the “mess” is easy enough to clean up. However, there is another result of doing this particular work – callouses. The vibrations from turning the wood inevitably cause the gouges and chisels to move enough in my hands that they build up these rough abrasions on my hands. Mary is always reminding me of how “rough” my hands feel. I purposefully don’t do much to soften them since these callouses protect my hands from repetitive injury. I’m not sure that’s the right thing to do, but it seems to have worked thus far. The only difficulty I have in using any of the tools in the shop is the joint pain that is produced from the work. I’m told that’s a result more of aging than the work!

 

The apostle in the reading for today uses this same word. However, he is urging the Ephesians to stay away from developing “callouses of the heart” (v. 19). These are spiritual callouses that we build from the repetitive ignoring of the sinful practices of our human nature. They lead us to ignore the prompting of the Holy Spirit calling us to change the destructive behavior of these habits and practices. It also produces a “darkness of understanding” (v. 18). We simply can’t see how badly these habits are affecting us and those we love. All of us have such habits. Some may produce greater, more destructive consequences than others, though all of them do not belong in the life of a believer.

 

Whatever may be embedded or built up in your life that doesn’t belong, will you ask the Lord to help you build different habits and practices?