Last week the news told us of quite a uniquely horrible story coming out of Florida. A man was swallowed alive by a sudden sinkhole that came up from his bedroom floor. Without warning, the ground below collapsed and he fell many feet down with the rubble of the collapse falling on top of him. It’s one of those tragedies that’s hard to even process because of how strange it is. But I would argue that we see this happen much more than we realize in our everyday lives.
Every day it seems there’s a new story about someone who’s personal lives have now collapsed and eaten them, their friendships, their career, or their family…alive. It seems, at first glance, that suddenly things just fell apart. And, in a sense, they did. Usually the actual collapse comes at a breaking point and is more absolute. But the process that gets people there is oftentimes rather slow and subtle.
Just like the water slowly eroded away at the limestone beneath this man’s house, our compromising decisions can slowly erode at the foundations of our lives. Inch by inch the ground is taken away beneath us but we don’t necessarily realize it because we’re still standing. We’re still able to go about our business. But how quickly this can change!
What shocked me when I saw images of the accident, at first, was that there was nothing to see! You hear a story about a huge sinkhole swallowing a man alive and then see pictures of a house that seems to have no real damage done to it. From the look of it, it was just a regular, slightly unkempt house.
What that shows me is that we can actually have our moment of collapse without it being immediately noticed. Did you catch that? I think we sometimes think of the moment of collapse being when the press catches wind or it becomes widely public in our sphere as to what’s happened. It’s when the church finds out that money’s been swindled. It’s when the wife finds out she’s been cheated on. But maybe it’s not then.
Maybe it’s when your soul collapses into the sin that you’ve been struggling with. It’s when you no longer are fighting it but have decided to just give in. At that point the inner man or woman is being swallowed alive. And onlookers from outside may not see it yet, but it’s happening!
We need to take warning from this tragic real-life story so that our story doesn’t reflect it. We’ve got to be aware of the erosion of compromise and sinful decisions. We must acknowledge that what we do on the inside and in the quiet spaces of our lives will eventually become known (Mark 4:22). So keep watch and check the ground beneath your feet. A firm foundation will lead to a full life!
One of the books that has continually had the greatest impact on my life talks a great deal about this exact kind of idea in its first chapter. So I intentionally did not revisit that chapter in writing this so that I wouldn’t by accident take any of his unique ideas. But I can’t encourage you enough to pick up “Ordering Your Private World” and let it challenge you and how you handle your inner life.