Fake Fingernail Fiasco

By Virginia Smith

I recently did something I never thought I’d never do – I got acrylic fingernails. They looked lovely, but I quickly realized I’d made a mistake. For one thing, my typing skills suffered; for a writer, that’s a disaster. I also had a tendency to drum those lovely nails on any available surface just for the joy of hearing the charming tap, tap, tap. My husband wasn’t amused. He threatened to get his wire cutters and put them out of his misery if I didn’t stop. No problem, I said, because all that tapping made my fingertips sore anyway.

Then my nails started to grow, pushing those hard-as-titanium tips out with them and leaving an ugly gap at the base. Ugh. I decided I didn’t like the Edward Scissorhands look anymore. The fake nails had to go. But it seemed a tremendous waste of money to pay someone else to remove them when I could do it myself.

Easier said than done. Why hasn’t the fake fingernail industry sold acrylic nail glue to NASA to take care of the tiles that keep falling off the space shuttle? Nail polish remover didn’t faze them, so I chipped and peeled and eventually hacked at them with the metal pick we use to dig nuts out of walnut shells.  Ouch! Three weeks later, I finally got the stuff off. My poor nails had suffocated beneath them, and looked like corrugated cardboard.

Afterward, I contemplated my faux-fingernail experience. That acrylic on my fingers was like sin in my life. Sin doesn’t go away by itself – it hangs in there, and no matter how good it looked to begin with, eventually it doesn’t look very pretty. And trying to get rid of it myself? Forget it. No matter how hard I try, I only make matters worse. In the meantime, sin can suffocate my close relationship with God, leaving me poor and miserable.

But Jesus can take that sin right away! Not only that, He can restore my spiritual health and make me whole again.

I hope I don’t ever succumb to the temptation to sin. But I’m human – I will. So I’m determined to remember the lesson of the fake fingernails. The minute I realize I’ve done something that will damage my relationship with my Father, I’m running to Jesus to get it taken away.

PRAYER: Father, thank You for the blood of Jesus that washes me clean.

“Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin,” Psalm 51:1-2 KJV.

Today’s devotion is by Virginia Smith, the author of over a dozen novels including Stuck in the Middle, which was a finalist for the 2009 American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year award, and the upcoming Third Time’s a Charm. Learn more about Ginny and her books at www.VirginiaSmith.org.