When I was a kid, there was a boy who lived in my town named David. I didn’t know him, but I knew of him because I had seen him on the news often. They talked about him at my school and we were encouraged to draw pictures and send him letters. David wasn’t like everyone else. He had a disease that gave him a weak immune system. In order to help him survive, they created a sterile chamber for him to live in. Everything that went into the chamber had to go through a seven day sterilization process. He became known as David the Bubble Boy.
David never got to have skin to skin contact with anyone. His parents and doctors had to wear special gloves to touch him. He never got to experience the feeling of grass under his toes or to feel the wind on his face. His whole life was spent in that sterile environment. It was psychologically difficult for him to be able to see others interact and express love through touch knowing he could not. He struggled with being contained in that environment knowing that there was more to life than being in a bubble.
We have to be careful ourselves that we don’t live in a spiritual bubble trying not to get infected by the world. We were not meant to live our entire lives in the safety and confines of the church. We were called to go into all the world and to preach the Gospel to everyone. We can’t go if we are afraid that we will be exposed to sin and therefor be susceptible to it. Jesus took a lot of hear from the Pharisees because He would go to the homes of sinners and love them. He didn’t care if a person was unclean. He reached out and touched them because that’s what we all need.
The Pharisees had built a spiritual bubble for themselves. They thought it made them holier than anyone. What it did was separate them from their mission. Jesus looked at them and said, “Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness.” We can separate ourselves from everything evil in this world and look the part of being righteous, but until we get out there and do the will of God, we are doing nothing more than living in a bubble. If we are to follow Christ’s example, we are to get out of those bubbles and minister to those who need it most.
Life in the bubble is nice for a while. There’s no risk, no chance of failure and no fear. The problem is the Gospel doesn’t flourish in a bubble. It only grows when it’s exposed to the outside world and sin. It can only touch the lives of those who touch it. It cannot be contained and therefor neither can you or I. We must break out of our safety bubbles and risk our lives for the Gospel. We are going to run the risk of failure, but we can’t let failure stop us. Every person that rejects the Gospel from you gets you one person closer to one who will accept it. Every life you touch will have a seed planted in it or a seed watered. We have to be about the Father’s business and we can’t do it in a bubble.
Devotions by Chris Hendrix 