Something to stay away from …

During the 1990’s I lived on a very short street that, by address, was technically in Crockett, California, but was actually situated squarely between the towns of Crockett and Rodeo. The distinguishing factor of this little street of houses was that it hugged up against what was then the Unocal 76 refinery.

That’s where the trouble begins.

When I first moved onto the street, I didn’t think anything about living so close to the refinery. If I knew then what I know now, I would never have moved there!

That’s because the refinery was neither a good nor safe neighbor. There was a time when each morning when I would get in my car to head to the church office, I noticed some kind of sludge on my window. This went on for days and I couldn’t figure out what was causing it. I finally learned that the refinery had a major release of chemicals into the air, knew of it, but allowed it to continue until it became so large they had no choice but to shut down the plant and fix the problem.

That after exposing neighbors to more than 300 tons of toxic chemicals.

I was one of several people who became very ill due to the exposure. I would wind up seeing a team of more than a dozen medical specialists to try to deal with the effects of the exposure to the chemicals. My physical issues slowly began to moderate after about five years, but to this day I still have some lingering effects from that dangerous exposure.

I learned the hard way that there are some things we should never be exposed to!

Even worse than being exposed to toxic chemicals is being exposed to evil. It’s something the apostle Paul gives us a concise warning about:

“Stay away from every kind of evil,” 1 Thessalonians 5:22.

Absolutely NOTHING good can come from being exposed to evil, and horrible things can happen by allowing ourselves to be around it.

What are you doing to heed Paul’s instruction to stay away from every kind of evil? How are you making sure that you do not expose yourself and your family to evil?

Scotty