Macaroni & Cheeseland
February 29, 2004
Dear Friends,
True story. The other night my youngest daughter had a dream. In her dream, she went to the train station to buy a ticket to Candyland. She told the ticket seller that she had $350. Unfortunately, the ticket seller said that she needed $351 to buy a ticket to Candyland. Upset at the prospect of not getting to go to Candyland, my daughter inquired where exactly she could go for $350. The ticket seller replied, “Macaroni and Cheeseland.” Do you ever feel that is the story of your life — $1 short and going to Macaroni and Cheeseland?
My daughter’s dream reminded me of a Scripture – “Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it.” (Heb. 4:1 NASB) The writer is in the middle of comparing believers to the children of Israel who failed to enter into the Promised Land. They had come close. They came all the way out of Egypt, survived crossing the Red Sea and survived the passage through the wilderness only to stand at the entrance to the Promised Land but not cross over. Why? They lacked the faith to go in. Instead of believing that God was strong enough to get them into the land, they chose not to believe and therefore died wandering in the wilderness homeless, landless and in many respects Godless. They were $1 short so to speak.
Someone once observed that the worst medal to get in the Olympics is the silver medal. The gold medal goes to the winner so it is obviously the best. The bronze medal is the next best because they are just happy to get a medal. The bronze medalist rejoices that they didn’t come in fourth since the fourth place person does not receive a medal at all. The silver medalist, on the other hand, always lives with the fact they were just a little short of winning the gold. They were just a little short of the glory. They were just a little short of having their national anthem played while standing on the tallest podium. They are always thinking about what could have been had they trained a little harder, jumped a little higher or ran a little faster. What would have happened had they had that extra dollar?
Don’t confuse the exhortation here. The writer to the Hebrews wasn’t teaching that if the children of Israel just prepared a little harder for battle they would have won. The message was that if they BELIEVED a little more, they could have gone into the land and God would have won the battles for them. We all too often confuse the basic Bible exhortation to faith versus the exhortation to works. The belief would have compelled the children of Israel to make the appropriate preparations that God wanted them to do. If you remember the story, they did make an attempt to go into the land after God had told them of their impending fate in the wilderness and it met with disaster. You can imagine that their preparations for battle were essentially the same with or without God’s blessing. Make no mistake about it, however, although the preparations might look identical, the results of a faithful battle and a faithless are as different as the victory and defeat they produce. It is the same with us.
Let us not find ourselves a dollar short and heading to Macaroni and Cheeseland. Let us take Paul’s analogy to heart. Let us truly live a life of faith. “Do you not realize that, though all the runners in the stadium take part in the race, only one of them gets the prize? Run like that, to win. Every athlete concentrates completely on training, and this is to win a wreath that will wither, whereas ours will never wither. So that is how I run, not without a clear goal; and how I box, not wasting blows on air. I punish my body and bring it under control, to avoid any risk that, having acted as herald for others, I myself may be disqualified.” (1 Cor. 9:24-27 NJB)
Have a great week!
