Only one peanut out of a hundred is selected to be an M&M chocolate peanut. The other 99 are chopped up for Snickers. The next time you treat yourself to one please notice the peanut is surrounded by chocolate and never on the edge. How they do that is a secret.
When I was a boy I heard a horror sermon (If we can have horror movies we can also have horror sermons.) that really frightened me. The preacher told us that only one in a hundred would be saved. Well, I looked around the church and there were about two hundred people present. It didn’t take but a millisecond to do the math. Only two of us were going to make it. The preacher surely thought he would make it. That left room for only one. What chance did I have? There was no way it would be me. Obviously you had to be like an M&M peanut. You had to be perfect. If I hadn’t been ten years old and needed a ride home I would probably have walked out and never gone back. What was the use?
My teen years weren’t much better. There were many more horror sermons telling me all the things I had to do. I am so thankful one day I woke up and realized that just because someone is a preacher it doesn’t make him right. As a matter of fact most of what I heard was wrong. Yes, we did have to be perfect. But the perfection was a gift. Jesus did it for me. My part was to accept it. Oh, the joy when I finally came to my senses and read the Bible for myself. John 3:17 – “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” Please note “through Him” not us.
Written by Roger Bothwell on April 1, 2014
Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org