As I walked outside into the morning sun, I could see the worms (Lumbricus terrestris), earthworms lined the concrete walkways, hundreds of them. The rain had caused them to appear en masse, fleeing in all directions (that is, if indeed worms do “flee”). Most were lifeless and dried to the concrete, already having succumbed to the absence of moisture, and the heat of the Sun. They had made their way from the lawn, headed wherever, in desperate, yet futile attempts to sustain life. In the midst of the carnage, I noticed one worm moving directly away from the lawn, toward the driveway, where sure-and-certain doom awaited him. I said to him, “Dude, your headed in the wrong direction. If you continue going that way you’re gonna die.” So, I flicked him up onto the lawn, to the safety of the grass and moisture.
I noticed another, which was headed back toward the lawn. “I said, ‘Yeah, Dude! Go! Keep going!’” He seemed encouraged by my words until, he turned directions! He was headed for the street, where sure and certain doom awaited him. So I reached down, and flicked him onto the lawn. He escalated into the air, flew several feet twirling all the while, and landed softly on the blades of grass, “WHOOHOO!” I wondered the story he would have to tell his lawnmates, “No. Seriously. I was flying. I don’t remember how I did it, but I was sailing through the air just like those things that eat us! It was an armstand back double-somersault gainer with one and a half twists in the free position swoop.”
Not surprisingly I saw the parallel here of the plight of mankind. Headed in a direction, anywhere else but toward the direction of safety, a course where sure and certain doom awaited every one of us. Our future was to be “dried to the concrete of death.” Without intervention of some kind, our fate was sealed.
By default, every person born into sin, which is everyone, is separated from God and headed in the wrong direction. But God didn’t want it that way. He sent Christ so that we could not only turn in the right direction, but actually get to safety in God.
Colossians 1:13-14 says, “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
Now without exactly tying the doctrine of election to a metaphor of a worm sailing through the air to safety, nor implying the value of human life equates to that of a non-arthropod invertebrate animal, (or any other arthropod invertebrate animal for that matter), for those of us who have believed in Christ, who have been made right again with God through the blood of Christ, we have made a quantum leap from sure-and-certain doom, to eternal safety. And we are there due to the efforts of God Almighty, not our own. All we had to do was believe, but we did have to believe in Christ.
We hadn’t done anything to merit his mercy, but in his sovereign grace God has rescued us, not because of who we are, but because of who he is.
He loved us, wanted a relationship with us, and rescued us from sure-and-certain doom.
Let the redeemed say, “WHOOHOO!” and, “Amen!”
