TEMPTATION

A recent news article reported on a dangerous practical joke played by a nursery employee:

A British Columbia-based nursery is trying to track down people who bought poisonous plants that were incorrectly labeled "tasty in soup."

Valleybrook Gardens, which distributed the plants, has worked with government officials to locate the buyers of 17 improperly labeled perennials sold at stores in British Columbia and Ontario from April 18 to 25. Only eight of the plants had been accounted for by Sunday.

The label should have read, "All parts of this plant are toxic," but an employee changed it to, "All parts of this plant are tasty in soup," said Michel Benoit, the nursery's general manager. "The employee was making a practical joke and thought it would be caught by a horticulturist," said Benoit.

The devil has done the same to us. God put a warning label on sin that declared, "Do not eat from this for you shall surely die." But our enemy switched labels. The label he attached to sin reads, "Looks good. Tastes great. Is desirable to make one wise."

Citation: The Appeal-Democrat (4-30-01); by Tom Tripp, Colusa, California

TEMPTATION

Writer and speaker Joni Eareckson Tada was paralyzed from the neck down in a diving accident. In her book Secret Strength, Joni wrote about facing temptation.

I was in my late twenties, single, and with every prospect of remaining so. Sometimes lust or a bit of fantasizing would seem so inviting-and so easy to justify. After all, hadn't I already given up more than most Christians just by being disabled? Didn't my wheelchair entitle me to a little slack now and then?

Joni asks her readers:

When God allows you to suffer, do you have the tendency to use your very trials as an excuse for sinning? Or do you feel that since you've given God a little extra lately by taking such abuse, He owes you a "day off'?

Joni Eareckson Tada teaches us that there is no excuse-not suffering, not great sacrifice, not even paralysis-for indulging impurity in our hearts.

Heart, Purity, Rationalization, Suffering
1 Cor. 10:13

Contemporary Illustrations For Preachers, Teachers, & Writers
Editor Craig Brian Larson, Baker Books, p. 264.