Termites and Whitewashed Tombs

As I type this I can hear hammering behind me. We have some carpenters replacing a header over a window that had been eaten by termites some time in the past. We had no idea until we went to replace that window that the structure of the home had been compromised. The outside looked great! The siding was strong and didn’t appear to have any problems. But termites don’t eat the siding. They only eat the important parts. The outside can look fine and presentable but on the inside there is no strength. Even the boards themselves might look fine. But the termites eat the inside out and only leave a hollow shell.

How often can that happen to us spiritually? We look great on the outside. We appear to have it together. We put up a facade and fool people for a long time. But on the inside we are eaten up. We are decaying. We have wrotten places. We may even think we are strong but the reality is we end up only an empty shell of who we were made to be. Jesus called people like that “Whitewashed tombs.” You look good on the outside but deep down, your life is full of death instead of life. It seems silly to whitewash a tomb. But that is what may people do on a daily basis.

How do we deal with this? Well, you can just put new siding over the eaten up structure but eventually it will cave in. No. Instead you have to remove the damage and fill in the void with something solid that moth and rust cannot destroy. You fill it with Jesus, the chief cornerstone and worry about external appearances later.