A Lesson from Plucking Eyebrows

The other morning, I spent a good many minutes plucking my eyebrows. This may sound like something you don't want to read, but let me tell you what I learned from the job. Plucking eyebrows reminds me a lot of getting sin out of your life.

First of all, you can't just shave your eyebrows or that will cause more problems. You have to get the hair all the way out. In the same way, you can't just shave your sin to make it look better for a day or hide what's really there. You have to get it out. C.S. Lewis writes in the perspective of Jesus, "I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don't want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked--the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead." According to Jesus, it is not enough for us to simply fill the cavity, shave the eyebrow, literally cover over the sin. To be a Christian means to destroy the sin. Pluck it out and wash it down the drain.

Plucking eyebrows and getting rid of sin are also similar in the fact that they hurt. This is pretty self-explanatory. If you've ever plucked your eyebrows or watched someone do it, you know it hurts. With sin, when you work hard to get rid of it or overcome the bad habit, it doesn't come easy. In fact, in brings pain. To give up of a selfish sinful desire is to give up of temporary pleasure...and that hurts. It is a sacrifice to pluck sin completely from your life, but it is worth it in the long run.

You may be asking yourself, "Doesn't the hair grow back?" Of course it does. Otherwise I wouldn't have been plucking my eyebrows again yesterday. But this doesn't ruin the comparison. Just because we have God's strength and forgiveness to help us destroy sin, that doesn't mean we won't keep sinning. Christians still sin. As a result, we must continually pluck the sin out. Until we're given a new body after we die, we will still have to pluck eyebrows and sin.

Where does Jesus come in? We obviously can not pluck eyebrow hairs out on our own or sin, for that matter. I have tried using my fingers to pull one of my eyebrow hairs out. And just for the record, it doesn't work. We need another tool to do the job - tweezers. In the same way, I can not get rid of sin on my own. It is my nature to disobey and disappoint God. How can I do otherwise on my own? God gives us the tool to destroy sin - His Son, Jesus Christ. Without Christ's death and the gift of the Holy Spirit, sin would still be rampant in our lives...and like a bushy eyebrow, it wouldn't be pretty.

If you haven't plucked your eyebrows before, hopefully this note has allowed you the opportunity to think about sin without going through the painful process of pulling hair out of your head. And if you have plucked your eyebrows and do on a regular basis, may you remember the sadness of sin while you pluck.

All that to say, sin is what I think about when I pluck my eyebrows.