Deception is a tricky business. That's the whole point, isn't it? To trick someone into believing something that is, isn't, or something that isn't, is. It's like magic, but not so nice.
      Deceptions come in all sizes. Some are quite elaborate and are called conspiracies. Conspiracies require more than one person on the deceivers end of the deception, and it helps if you're politician, although it's not a requirement. A conspiracy just means a bunch of people all decide to tell the same lie. Or, in the case of some families, decide not to say anything at all.
      Some deceptions are so small we call them little, as in little white lies. That means not being exactly honest with a person because it might hurt their feelings, although if they knew you were deceiving them it might hurt them more. Deception is a tricky business.
      Winnie-the-Pooh is trying to get some honey from a beehive high in a tree. His deception is to roll in a very muddy place and then float up to the hive holding onto a blue balloon so as to appear to be a small black cloud.
"When you go after honey with a balloon, the great thing is not to let the bees know you're coming." It is a very tricky deception for a bear with no brain. Unfortunately the bees become suspicious and Pooh becomes anxious. Even having Christopher Robin pace back and forth with an umbrella muttering, "Tut,tut. It looks like rain," doesn't help.
      In the end Pooh decides that these are the wrong sort of bees and wishes to come down right away, but not too quickly, if you know what I mean. So Christopher Robin shoots Pooh's balloon with his gun and as the air slowly comes out, Pooh slowly comes down.
      Although Pooh came down alright, "his arms were so stiff from holding on to the string of the balloon that they stayed straight up in the air for more than a week, and whenever a fly came and settled on his nose he had to blow it off. And that is why he is called Pooh."
(Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne; E.P. Dutton & Co., New York; 1950)
      "If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." 1 John 1:8
      Winnie-the-Pooh knows why his deceptions get him in so much trouble. After falling out of a tree into a gorse bush - a rather prickly situation - he observes, "It all comes, I suppose, of liking honey so much." I wonder if we are so honest in our own self appraisal. We like to indulge our sinful nature, at least at first. In fact it is sometimes only the consequences of sin, like gorse bushes, that call us to repentance. What they don't know won't hurt them....?
      Sin is a tricky business because it is deception at it's best. The first and best deception is that sin is primarily what we do and not who we are. If sin is limited to what we do, then we can stop sinning. And people who think they have stopped sinning act in extremely sinful ways towards those who they think have not. You see it goes much deeper than behavior. "We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves..." Does that mean we can't change sinful behavior? Of course not. See how tricky it is?
      What we can do is be honest with God, ourselves, and one another by confessing that our bondage comes from liking sin so much, from it being our very nature. What we can do is be honest with God, ourselves, and one another that the honey of self-indulgence and self-justification and self-pity and even self-hatred is a deception from which we need to be freed, before we land in the gorse bush. What we can do is be honest with God, ourselves and with one another that we are the ones we most often deceive.
      And then God who is faithful and just will take careful aim and burst our balloons of deception so that we are rescued from ourselves, although we might be stiff for a little while. Grace can be tricky business, too.