THE GOD OF A SECOND CHANCE

Two of my all-time favorite movies growing up were about the life of Thomas Edison. The name of the first movie that came out about him was called, “Young Tom Edison” in which Mickey Rooney played Tom as a young boy and the movie chronicled his early inventions and scientific experiments that usually ended up with all types of disastrous results. While most of the people in his small hometown thought Tom a slight bit crazy, he always took solace in his understanding mother who saw the great potential in Tom and believed that he had it in him to do great things. In the second movie, “Edison The Man”, Spencer Tracy played Tom as a young twenty-two year old man who moved to New York city to begin a lifetime of experimenting, in failures along with all his successes. It is in that movie during the process of creating the first light bulb, that a young boy was given a second chance by Thomas to carry a brand new invention of the light bulb upstairs from one lab to the other. As he did, the boy tripped and broke the precious invention that took 24 hours to create and would take another 24 hours to create another one. As the team worked tirelessly to redo what had been destroyed, tired and in need of sleep and rest, Thomas gave the second newly created bulb once again to the young boy and told him, to try again. He simply gave him a second chance. That was my favorite part of the whole movie.

A second chance! Oh how we all want and need those second, third and even sometimes a fourth chance at something. I am reminded of a scripture in the book of Luke chapter 13:6-9 that tells the story of a man that had a fig tree planted in his vineyard. One day the owner went to inspect the tree’s fruit, yet it had none. The owner then went to the caretaker that look after the vineyard and told him that for three years he had inspected that tree and found that it had not produced any fruit, so to cut it down. He said that there was no reason for  the vine to simply use up the nutrients in the soil if it was not going to produce any fruit. The care taker replied to the owner to leave it one more year, and during that time, he would dig around it and fertilize it….and with his added help, maybe the vine would produce fruit the following year. Then, he said, if it does not, then cut it down.  

Jesus was wanting us to see the real message in that parable….the message is, that God expects us to produce His fruit if we claim to be His children. He has every right to remove us if we are simply basking in the benefits of the soil that we are planted in Christ Jesus. On our behalf, Jesus, as our mediator to the Father and through His shed blood on the cross which gives Him the right to tend us, as the caretaker tends the vineyard for His Master, pleads to the Father for us to have another chance! He even goes as far as digging in and around as the caretaker did in Luke to break up the fallow ground around our hearts and in our lives, so that His word being planted in us works effectively, to accomplish what He is trying to help us see and do. Like Thomas Edison’s kind and understanding mother, we too can take solace in the fact that Jesus sees in us the potential that we do not see ourselves and longs to help us reach it.

What really matters in us having those extra chances is, “What will we do about it?”, or should I say, “What will we do with our second chance?” God’s word teaches us that we are held accountable for them. Romans 6:6-12 tells us,  “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.” While we are free to try again and again, we are reminded that we are to strive to get it right and we can because we are no longer enslaved to our wrong choices, because they no longer have dominion over us, but we are set free, to do the right thing!

Live for Jesus, that's what matters my friend!

Loving you today,

Bren