Good news -- there are no perfect people. Hope Covenant Church in Chandler, Ariz., has a sign outside the building that says, “No perfect people allowed.” I know with all certainty that I am not perfect, but it often seems like other people are. Sometimes it feels like everyone is a better Christian than me. I look around and think, that person’s got it all together. Particularly when they don’t act like they are perfect. We put on our happy faces on Sunday morning, and politely smile at each other in church. “How are you?” “I’m good, thanks. You?” “I’m good.” Sometimes it leaves us all the more lonely, and all the more distant.
But we are all sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God. Our lives are full of sin with none greater than any other -- all of our lives. It’s only through His gift of grace that we are forgiven. And what of this forgiveness?
No matter how many times I’ve heard the truth, there have been times in my life when I thought, “I’ve asked for forgiveness and I believe myself to be forgiven, but how can the all-knowing God possibly see through this thing that I have done, and see me as his blameless child?” Jeremiah 31:34 says “...I will forgive them for the wicked things they did, and I will not remember their sins anymore.” But how can that possibly be? I know that He operates under a different logic system than human understanding can ever hope to fathom. But it still seems so odd to me that He could just essentially forget what we’ve done, even when we are forgiven. It’s hard to believe that in His eyes, it’s as if it never happened. I mean, this is the all-powerful, all-knowing God we’re talking about here. He knows the deepest and darkest part of us. How can He not remember our sins once we are forgiven?
It was at four in the morning when I heard my two-year old calling. When I opened her door she whimpered, “Mommy, I’m lost.” So I sat on her bed, rubbed her back, told her where she and that she should go back to sleep. As I was laying in bed trying to hurry up and fall asleep again, it was like God tapped me on the shoulder and said, “that’s it.” When Ella said she was lost, I forgot when she didn’t listen to me yesterday, or when she knocked her little sister over, and even when she rolled around on the floor of the scrapbooking store -- my heart had melted -- my baby thought she was lost.
At one time or another, we all feel lost. We all feel detached from God, perhaps because of our sin. Not one of us is perfect. When we cry out to God in our darkness, how much more does He put his arms around us and say, “oh, Honey, you’re not lost. I know where you are, and I am here with you.”
Posts
