Christmas Cookie Sermon #1

I baked gingerbread men today and frosted them this evening. Tomorrow I will take them to church for my children's sermon. I will tell the story of the old woman who baked a gingerbread man only to have him hop off the baking sheet and run away taunting her with, "Run, run as fast as you can...you can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man." The Gingerbread Man encounters other people and animals, and each time he runs away while calling out the same line.

Finally he comes to a river and doesn't know how he will cross it. Along comes a fox who speaks to him kindly and offers to take him to the other side. All the Gingerbread Man has to do is sit on the fox's tail. Once he is in the middle of the river and the water gets higher, the fox suggests that the Gingerbread Man move to his back. A little further on and he suggests that the Gingerbread Man move to his head. With a toss of his head, he flips the Gingerbread Man up into the air and snaps him up in his mouth.

I will use the story to make the point that there is real evil in the world, and sometimes we don't recognize it. Just because a person offers to help us in some way, doesn't mean that they have our best interests in mind. It is easy to get into a really bad situation through a series of small moves that we don't realize are putting us on the brink of disaster. The wise thing to do is not to take the first wrong step.

The Bible says we are to avoid all appearance of evil. (I Thessalonians 5:22) If we enjoy dancing around on the edge of wrong, we will eventually find ourselves on the fox's head.