Daily Devotional for August 6, 2021
No Fooling
“Shoulder to shoulder, then fold it over,” Grady recited as he folded the final T-shirt in the laundry basket. He glanced up as his dad came in and set several bags of groceries on the counter. “Hi, Dad!” he said. “Mom’s not home from work yet, but I had a snack, and I’ve already done my chores.” He patted the clothes he had folded.
“Good,” Dad said. “How was school?”
“Okay,” Grady replied. “I don’t have homework, so can I go over to Drew’s?”
Eyeing the laundry Grady had folded, Dad lifted a T-shirt and examined it. “Where did you get this load of laundry?”
“From the laundry room,” said Grady.
Dad frowned and shook his head. “The basket with clean clothes is in the hallway. You got socks out of it this morning, remember?”
“Oh no!” Grady groaned. “You mean I wasted time folding dirty clothes?” He looked at the basket. “I didn’t even notice these things weren’t clean. They don’t look dirty. Just this once, can we put them away and not tell Mom?”
Dad chuckled. “You really think she wouldn’t notice?” He shook his head. “Grady, when we try to hide things we’ve done wrong, we only deceive ourselves.”
“Deceive,” echoed Grady. “We talked about that in church yesterday. Mr. Phil read a verse that says something about deceiving ourselves. He said that’s what we do when we try to convince ourselves that some wrong thing we’ve done is not so bad and isn’t really sin.”
Dad nodded. “We sometimes manage to fool ourselves and other people, but we don’t fool God at all. That’s why we should never try to hide our sin. We need to confess it to Jesus and ask Him to forgive us.”
Grady sighed. “Well, I guess it wasn’t sinful to fold this stuff, but putting it away to deceive Mom would be,” he said, looking at a small stain on one of the shirts he had folded. “It wouldn’t fool her for very long anyway. I guess I better put these back in the laundry room and fold the clothes in the other basket.
Want to help me?”
“Sure,” said Dad with a grin. “If you’ll help me put away these groceries.” -Patricia LoCascio
How about you?
Have you tried to tell yourself that some wrong thing you’ve done is okay? Sometimes it’s easy to convince ourselves that telling a white lie or being jealous of someone isn’t so bad, but it’s still sin. Don’t try to hide it by deceiving yourself and pretending it’s okay. Confess it to Jesus. He promises to forgive you and give you a clean start.
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