THE TRAP OF SIN
Recently I was in for a surprise. When I accessed my Facebook page, I was shocked to find a sweet message from a beautiful woman. Intrigued,
I read on; she was proposing to be friends with me that she was a refugee from
Rwanda living with her step mother in Dakar Senegal. Only that she didn’t want
to just be friends, she wanted us to be in a love relationship and that distance
doesn’t matter (at that I got wondering how desperate I must seem in Facebook).
Similarly she wanted me to help in accessing some money, 6.5 million US
Dollars, (easy way to get rich, right?) and feign to be her business partner.
So at first I smelt a rat, it all seemed too good to
be true, but decided to humor them, you know, see how far all this goes. As the
story goes, it all culminated to the point where she even started directing me
to the Royal Bank of Scotland, and to one Mr. Nelson Smith, to help her cash
her money since she had “refugee status” and could not do it herself.
At some point, I ran a search in Google on all names
given, Patrick Maxwell, Nelson Smith etc., only to find that I am not the only
one, there are so many websites and Facebook pages that have been started and
dedicated to such marauding con artists, and they made first page in all of
them. Even the Royal Bank of Scotland had issued an official statement
denouncing this band of thieves and warning the public to beware of such. In fact
I got to see those people who had pursued the matter further and how it finally
gets to giving money to get more money, how each of the victims had started
filling in legal documents and how they looked as the were the ones trying to steal
the money, it all gets in a big mess and bottom line, you end up conned, BIG
TIME!! (Thank God I didn’t fall into the trap.)
What gets me the most is that for all that they only
change the name of the girl, everything else is copy pasted to your inbox, and
at the end of it all you end up hurting and losing money while all he had to do
was copy and paste, doesn’t even think or ponder what you say, it’s all the
same to him or her (whoever they are.)
Yet thinking about it, I can’t help but notice how we
all fall to that same trap every day in our lives, just a different brand of
pranksters. 1 Corinthians 10:13 No
temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is
faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but
with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to
bear it.(NKJV)
The Pranksters, the devil and his minions, all use the
same ruse, the same fiendishly clever prank over and over again, regardless of
our response to it. They lie and deceive and feed us these lies over and over
again until we are all entangled in the mud and no way under it…
We are promised wealth, riches, and beautiful people
at our beck and call; and the statement that has by far led so many people to the
rut, “IT WILL BE FUN”.
A civil servant imagines all the status quo
and wealth he can acquire from the money obtained from bribery…
A lonely man
imagines all the pleasure he is going to get from sleeping with a prostitute…
An estranged wife
imagines all the love and adoration she will have from her husband if she went
to consult witchcraft…
A child sees
how he will get out of trouble from his parents by lying…
Such lies lead us to the pit without us knowing it,
yet with our eyes wide open we do not see the snares set before us.
It is painful, to say the least, every time I see a
man, woman, child, government official, a classmate, a police, a driver… succumb
to those little stupid lies of the devil. People don’t see it while they do it,
but it is only when the bait has done the trick do they find themselves strung
out and unable let loose, now slaves, rather, captives of the sin that has
them.
Yes, it is indeed painful for me, a person who has no
prior interaction with them, just a casual observer, to witness as the trap
works its way to the person. I remember one time I was in a Matatu, overloaded
and still seeking for more, an elderly woman asked, “watakaa wapi?” (Where will
they sit?). Yet we were stopped by a traffic police officer and a small token
of fifty shillings was enough for him to risk the lives of the multitude of passengers
squeezing in the matatu. One could argue, “why not get out,” but in real sense
all matatus plying that area have that same trend, not unless you have a
personal vehicle you don’t have a luxury of choice. ABIDE OR GET OFF is the
golden rule, one that allows the driver and conductor of the matatu to dictate
over the poor passengers.
So, how much more is their Creator grieved as He
watches his beautiful works of arts, (us), fall deeper in the saddle, entrench
ourselves in the quagmire.
I once heard the story of a boy who wanted to go
swimming with the sharks but his parents won’t let him, they forbade him, they
even put a fence around him so as not to let him go any further, A malicious
person helps the boy cross the obstacles, and alas the boy takes a dive in the
waters as the parents watch, unable to do anything but scream to their child,
held by the very same restrictions they put upon the boy. The sharks quickly recognize
the dinner that has just been served and within no time, the boy’s flesh is
licked fresh off the bones…
How often do we find ourselves in the boy’s shoes,
ready to do something that will ultimately kill us yet instead of seeing the
threat we dive in it. SIN IS A scourge worse than DEATH, a monster more
treacherous than our worst nightmare, yet it shows itself as our friend, a compatriot,
but no sooner do we give it leeway than we are utterly destroyed. Paul had some
sense when he said in Ephesians 4:27Neither
give place to the devil.(KJV)
Why do people run away from God, our Saviour, and
instead run towards sin, our destroyer? Jesus said in John 10:10: The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and
to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more
abundantly. (NKJV)
Choose
not to be deceived today,
Choose not
to fall in the trap,
Make a
choice to abandon sin,
And ultimately
choose the right way
The
path of Righteousness
Few
find it…
But those
that do,
Reap more
than they sow
Get more
than they bargained for
And ultimately,
That is
the best choice you can ever make.
Lord,
I choose you,
I leave behind
whatever pleasures that the devil promises
And ultimately
I pick you Father,
For your
promises are not vain.
I pray that
you receive me,
Forgive me
when I stray,
And help me
dust up when I tumble,
All this I
pray,
In Jesus name,
AMEN.
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