4 Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues;
This is a cry that could be made by God today to His people. Perhaps He is making this call. This is the call to repentance, to run from sin. I often feel too comfortable with the sin in myself. When I see it in others, it greatly bothers me. But I think I am not alone in this feeling. There is an important principle laid out in this verse. If you share in sin, you will share in the consequences of that sin. That connection is inevitable, even if those consequences don’t appear right away. Often times we can hide sin from each other. We learn ways to cover our tracks or keep our sin in the shadows of life. But eventually the magnifying glass comes out and the spotlight gets moved in our direction. I watched the movie Ratatouille last week. The Chef is guided by the rat who is the best chef alive, but of course he is a rat, so is hated by humans. The rat’s talent for food is even misunderstood by his own rat family. When the rat gets angry with his human Chef he invites his rat friends to invade the food locker at the restaurant. They are all eating and gather in the food locker and then the light gets turned on. They scatter in every direction, scampering to get out of the light. God wants us to scamper away from sin now rather than later. He wants us to abandon sin and run to righteous living. God is calling us to this type of action today. Nothing that God calls you to leave is worth keeping. God always has the best in His food locker. No matter what area of life we talk about, God has our best interests at heart. Sin and its consequences have interfered with God’s desires for us. We were designed to live in a perfect world without sin. But Adam and Eve messed that up for all of us. But God calls us to live in this sinful world with our eyes toward Him, our feet moving in His direction and our ears and hearts always open to His whispers.
The Arnold Journey 