photo courtesy https://www.army.mil/birthday/
Last Sunday, while visiting a congregation of God’s people in Columbus, Georgia, I met a soldier–a brother in Christ– with a remarkable story. It seems that, while he was stationed in the Middle East, the United States Army’s birthday (June 14th) rolled around and several units were assembling at an undisclosed location to have a festive morale-building celebration in honor of the occasion. A giant cake was ordered for this birthday party and it fell the duty of this soldier to go and pick up the cake. So he got in his assigned vehicle, a Hummer, and made the trip to retrieve the biggest cake he’d ever seen.
All was well until he found himself under enemy fire on the return trip. Panic struck this soldier as deadly missiles were barely missing the Hummer. In the seat beside him where his partner was supposed to be sitting, armed and ready…in the place where the weaponry to defend his very life was normally positioned was… cake–a giant cake.
Thankfully, this brother, after a couple of very near misses, escaped the fire and made it safely back to his battalion. The party began and the cake was cut. Thus, my opportunity on Sunday to meet him. But this big, brave and brawny soldier almost died for a large piece of birthday cake.
It occurs to me that we sometimes take great spiritual risks for pieces of cake. The devil is attacking and sometimes we let our guards down. Sometimes in the place of spiritual ammunition gained from study of the Word, we have worldly pleasure and entertainment. Sometimes in the seat of conviction, we have the religion of convenience. Sometimes our spiritual lives are risked for something as small as a night of fun with friends or a date with a guy who is fun, but not holy. Sometimes we risk our chances to make it home safely for wealth or prestige. I know that, even if a man should gain the whole world in exchange for his soul, it would be a very poor trade indeed (Matthew 16:26). But I fear that, very often, many are selling out for so much less. We go spiritually bankrupt for a piece of cake. We are destroyed by enemy fire because we let the cheap “cake” of this world get in the “seat” where the tools of our spiritual warfare should be. When we do this, unlike the soldier, we will not make it safely home.
Maybe it’s time to rearrange priorities and put the important, eternal things back in the place where they belong.
