HELEN SANDERS
2-25-2026
A LESSON FROM AN ONION

If you have ever cut an onion, then you know that it can cause your eyes to burn and bring tears. Often, you cannot even see what you are doing. If we were to peel a layer of an onion, it does not cause burning like cutting it. Yet we use onions to bring flavor to our food and most often cut them up.

One day I was pondering on the scriptures and the Lord talked to me about an onion. He said we are like an onion, made up of many layers. Often one layer has sin attached to it, and when it isn’t repented of then another layer grows over it. Soon the layers go deeper and deeper and the sin festers underneath them.

If we have kept that sin buried under many layers, eventually the layers cause us to ignore it, but God sees it there. He may even give a nudge to repent of it, but often we just ignore it again until it becomes much harder to remove.

If we receive the correction from God immediately when we sin, he peels away that layer away and it is gone forever. It is when there is sin in our lives that we have not chosen to repent from that causes God to do deep cutting to get to it. Then, instead of peeling back that one layer, God must cut deeper to get rid of it. This is when it burns deeply in our spiritual eyes because we have failed in our walk with God.

How much more pleasant it is to let a layer be peeled through repentance, than to have to cut through several layers to get to that sin that has been buried.

Repentance must be a daily habit. Just like we bathe in the natural daily, we must do the same thing spiritually. Like onions, it is a choice to be peeled or cut; and peeling is less painful than cutting.