My Fat Scrubs

And he sacrificed all the priests of the high places who were there, on the altars, and burned human bones on them. Then he returned to Jerusalem. 2 Kings 23:20

I’ve got two sets of scrubs. One set – the set I can’t fit into right now – are my skinny scrubs. Skinny may not be exactly accurate. I’ve never been skinny, but they’re the scrubs I wear when I’ve been eating well. The other set are my fat scrubs, which I’m forced to wear when I’ve been struggling. Sadly, even my fat scrubs are getting a little snug lately. Eating healthy is a perennial battle for me, but it’s been worse lately. I’ve seen weights on the scale that I’m ashamed to write. I have enjoyed times of success in the past of course, back when I had to buy those skinny scrubs in the first place. So, I’ve been looking back, contemplating what worked previously. How did I do it back then? Let’s just do that again. It seems simple. I know exactly what I did before.

So, why haven’t I employed those behaviors that worked back then? It’s because that was a tremendous amount of work. I won’t go into all the details, but eating healthy and losing weight meant that my wife and I committed to radical behavioral changes that took up a significant amount of time, money, and effort every day. In looking back then, I’ve been daunted by the thought of making all those changes again. So, I’ve tried to make some minor changes, doing just a few of the things that brought me success previously. I’ve hoped to see radical success without doing all the radical work.

Authentic transformation though, usually means commitment to radical change. This is illustrated in today’s passage. In the story, Josiah ascended to the throne of Judah, inheriting a culture that was permeated with idol worship. Wanting to follow God, King Josiah set out to rid the land of idols and all the trappings that went with it. This was no small project though. For Josiah to clean house, he had to violently rip out and tear down everything that accompanied those idols. In today’s verse, he even killed the priests who oversaw the pagan worship. To repent and return to God, meant violently and painfully cutting idol worship out of Judah.

Change is painful, which is why I’ve not yet done it. I don’t like squeezing into my fat scrubs though, so, I’ve got a choice to make. And as long as I don’t make the right choice, I’ve made the wrong one. I’ll let you know how it goes. . .