A number of years ago, I had a night out with my 4-year-old son. Halfway through our hamburgers, I detected rumblings in the booth behind me. The muffled anger in a man’s voice soon erupted in a snarl, “What did you say?” A woman shot back, “I said I’d never come crawling to you. I couldn’t get that low.” I cringed as he cursed at her and said, “I don’t know why I ever brought you to this restaurant tonight.” “I do,” she said. “You’ve got a guilty conscience!”

Ben was staring over my shoulder, so I asked him what he was thinking about. “Oh, I’m thinking about Jesus,” he said, “and how He died for our sins.”

Ben’s response left quite an impression on me. As the angry man and woman finished their meal by chewing up one another, I had to admit that I too knew about anger and a bad conscience. Then my own child reminded me that Christ came into this world to rescue us from our sin.

We have no excuse for falling back into the kind of cannibalism that took place in that restaurant. We have been forgiven and have received a spirit of love. And we have the example of Jesus. His ways are as practical and life-changing as we’re willing to let them be.

  — Mart De Haan