Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.

I once worked with a brilliant group of health care providers in a very specialized area. We were literally locked in together in ten hour stretches with each other and with up to nine very sick psychiatric patients.

We also socialized together much of the time and drew our outside of the unit friends into our circle.

We spoke our own language and that included a sincere ease with cursing.

I didn’t realize how much my work life infused itself into my every day being until my daughter told me one day that she would prefer that I quit my job if I had to say bad words in every other sentence.

She noticed a change in me that I had failed to recognize. Cursing was so common for us that it went virtually unnoticed.

We were the special team. We set the standard for professional accomplishments and yet even a child could recognize that we were poor examples of moral conduct.

I think it took me three years to become totally immersed in the culture of my unit and to be able to curse with the best of them. I think that 20 years later I am still working on losing some of the habits gained.

I now find myself engaged in activities with people who are traveling on the same road that I am. Most of my friends spend more time in pursuit of works of the spirit than those of the world. We attend church together, we socialize together we have so much in common that there is an ease in our company.

I teach my grandchildren that there is a lot of truth in many of the old adages such as “birds of a feather” and “lying with dogs guarantees fleas”.

I am able to teach them these truths without preaching because we acknowledge the every day changes we see that just happen, both good and bad, when we spend time with a new set of friends, .

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? And what fellowship can light have with darkness? (2 Corinthians 6:14 NIV)

If we turn on the light, there indeed will not be darkness, but how easy it is to just sit in the dusk and fail to recognize the impending night.

May God Forever Be a Blessing in Your Life!!!