Watch Where You Step!

A Continual Evil

War is a horrible, terrifying thing which, unfortunately, is an ever present evil in the affairs of man. Throughout history, man has developed new weapons and new techniques for delivering those weapons in conflicts over land, money, power, women, and sometimes completely ridiculous causes.

A Modern Terror

Of the various conditions that a warrior can face on the battlefield, few are as terrifying as a relatively modern invention: the minefield. A minefield describes an open space filled with buried explosive devices designed to explode when triggered by movement or by contact. Consider the shock caused to a group of soldiers when one of their men takes a step and it is the last they ever make, being grievously injured in an explosion.

Once more, minefields were sometimes forgotten even years after the wars that caused them were resolved, leading to accidental deaths of travelers, and sometimes even playing children. Because of the great danger caused by mines in the last 100 years of history, they have now in recent years been banned from the battlefield.

A Singular Purpose

Such devices are created for solely one purpose, and they perform that purpose well. In many ways, though, land mines are much like the danger of sin in the life of man. Man walks a path of life, and in Christ can walk a path of light leading to heaven. But along that path, detours into sin are legion. Even if these “minefields” of sin are marked with warning signs, man will still choose to venture into them. Sin, like the mine, will explode causing grievous injury when man least expects it.

In battlefields of the past, sometimes the only real way to survive a minefield was to, through chance, fail to step on one. No one would wish to take such a gamble with their life unless there was no other choice. But man makes a similar choice every time he wanders into the “minefield” of sin, and in that field you will always eventually step on a mine.

Keeping Free From Danger

And just like the tragedy of innocents, sometimes children, finding a live mine from a war long forgotten, the impact of sin many times will harm the innocent. The only way to protect our children from the damage of sin is to never venture down its path. The only way we can avoid the minefields is to pay attention to the warning signs. The only way to be certain of safety is to watch our path, and make sure we are following the one that was made by Jesus Christ.