Fireworks and Fake Money

There are a few traditions here in China at New Years time that stick out.  Meeting with friends and family for fellowship and food, and  making dumplings together, and then eating them the next day, and visiting the relatives for a short stay stand out as my favorites.  Then there are fireworks...all day and all night.  At first it was fun, tantalizing, mesmerizing, loud, and sometimes beautiful.  Now, it seems annoying, mundane, and trite.  Everyone gets together and lights their firecrackers as they meet one another.  The fireworks  echo through the canyons of skyscrapers.  Once you are done, you leave the mess behind on the sidewalks and go about your business.

Another tradition is burning money to your dead ancestors.  Well, not real money, but paper with lots of zeroes behind the numbers.  So, take your fake money and burn it, so the smoke will reach either the gods or your ancestors so they can have funds to live a happy afterlife.  We called it "fake money to fake gods".

At first I thought, "how silly, they are!"  Then the thought occurred to me that this is what most of us do everyday, maybe not to ancestors or gods, but our own homemade idols.  Don't we take the money we earn, burn it to our own habits, addictions, and obsessions - usually things that have no eternal purpose whatsoever.  If it is not used for God's economy, it is really just burning it to fake gods.  Then, with the things we have purchased we revel loudly and with abandon.  Sure, it is fun at first, but soon these bad choices lead to a mess for us, and others.

Fortunately, there is one who has the right currency and the ability to clean up messes.  The currency - a perfect and holy life - spent as a sacrifice for the messes we made.  His spent blood sacrifice washes our dirty sins white as snow.  The mess is sent far away, "as far as the East is from the West", and remembered no more.

Hallelujah!  What a Savior!


Isaiah 1:18  “ Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the LORD, “ Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.


Revelation 7:14
And I said to him, “Sir, you know.” So he said to me, “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Psalm 103:12
As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.


Lord, forgive me for burning so much of my resources to false gods.  Thank you for providing a Heavenly solution to put my sin into time, and my soul into eternity with You.