Deceitful Beauty

 

"Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised."

Proverbs 31:30

Take a look at this BEAUTIFUL tree.  I have been admiring the wonderful display of color on it.  I see this tree about 3 times a week on the drive to church.  It even outperforms the trees in the background.

Take an even closer look...

Closer

Closer

This is NOT a beautiful tree it is POISON IVY.  Yes, that's right Poison Ivy.  The roots found some good ground and dug in, the ivy climbed and wound its way around the telephone pole.  It even branched out and looks like a tree in every way. 

It reminds me of sin and the way sin can overtake a person.  It also reminds  me of the many verses talking about the end times and the church, verses about guarding our heart, verses about how deceitful our tongue is, verses on our heart...

Jeremiah 17:9   "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? "

 Mark 4:19   "And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful. "

2 Corinthians 11 :13   "For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ."

Colossians 2:8   "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. "

2 Timothy 3:1-7  "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.  For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;  Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof:  from such turn away.  For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, ledaway with divers lusts, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of truth."

Deceit, watch out for it, it's everywhere.