deep stench

Hey everyone!!! Sorry that it has been so long since my last post. I've been out of town, and really not had access or time to get to the internet. It's weird not getting to check email and cruise the net from the comfort of my recliner (like I'm doing right now.) Ahhh, this is the good life...however, I can honestly say that not being tied to the computer and all it's distractions can be a very good thing as well.

So, it has been an eventful week/end. Pretty much all of my time has been spent with family (both mine and Ren's) in Savannah for the past few days. It is always good spending time with family. I don't get to see my family everyday, so I think it makes me appreciate them more. I also think that because I don't see them often it helps us to have a better time when we are all together. That being said, there are some definite advantages to living close to family that we don't get to take advantage of. Such as help with raising children. Advice and help on how to do things around the home. For instance, my brother lives in Savannah near my parents and my dad spent all morning helping my brother fix his bathroom.

Anyway, all in all, time with family is a good thing. So let's get to the heart of the matter. If you've read this far, it's because you want to know what in the world could be this Deep Stench that Jeremy is talking about. Let me tell you.

The very reason that I went home early for Thanksgiving is so that I could take part in what has become a fairly regular tradition for me the last 5 or so years. In Savannah, there is a civic organization called the Shriner's. Each year at Thanksgiving time they hold a Boston butt cook to raise money for the St. Jude's Children's hospital. For those of you that are laughing because we were cooking butt...then ha ha laugh it up. You don't know funny, until you've been around a bunch or 70 year old men that keep saying, "those sure are some nice butts." Well, it just so happens that they do cook butt every year and yours truly is the head butt cooker. Actually, we don't cook the butts, we smoke the butts. (I'm sure that right now, many of you are laughing at the mental image of smoking a butt...so let me just say that a Boston butt is a cut of meat from a pig...and by smoking I mean that we build a very big, very hot fire and then direct the smoke from that fire to the meat, and the hot smoke is actually what cooks the meat. If you want to know how hot the fire was, at one point, it singed my eyebrows, beard, eyelashes and hair on the side of my face!!!)

Now that I've explained what butt is and how it is smoked, please know and understand that this process takes a long time. My friend Jeff and I had to prepare and cook 850 Boston butts. This is a lot. It takes about 7 hours to do this, and we had to cook three different loads. About 285 at a time. Needless to say, I apart of cooking for 26 straight hours. NO SLEEP. 26 straight hours of standing in front of a cooker, being choked by the smoke and the fire...and you guessed it the unbelievable smell.

So, anyway, the smell is so bad, that when I get home at 6:00am the next day, my parents make me strip down in the garage, and leave my clothes there. I've taken 4 showers and there are still times when I can smell it on my hands. My clothes have been washed 3 or 4 times and they still smell like it too. I'm talking a deep, deep stench.

It makes me think of sin. I know that sounds weird, but we all sin, and gets down into us deep. We try to do good things, and overcome it...but we still stink. We try to wash ourselves off with good deeds, but the smell of our sin is still there. There is only one thing that gets the stench of our sin out of our lives...the blood of Jesus. I can't earn my self clean, I can't "good" myself clean enough.

Thank you Jesus for washing away the stench of my sin.

1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.