Do Not Forget

God does not forgive, much less forget.
At least not in the way we most often think about it.
Just saying.

He never makes our sins just go 'poof!' and disappear. 
He does, however, move them.
I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist.--Isaiah 44:22
...as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.--Psalm 103:12
But He does not make sin disappear until somebody dies.

When we know we are guilty, He does not forgive.
When we repent, He does not forgive.
Only after somebody dies does God forgive and, for us, God wants that person to be Jesus.

When we repent and believe, our sins are moved to Jesus' back, and He died for them, all of them. 
If we don't repent and believe, we are stuck with our own sins, forever, all the way into eternity, where we must do the dying for them.

Imagine that, every time we lie, a soldier drives another nail through Jesus' hand into the cross.
Every time we cheat or betray or love the world,--another nail, and another and another.
Don't kid yourself.
If you expect forgiveness, this must happen. It must. Either that, or you hang on to your sins right into hell.
The only way out is to stop sinning, which we should probably give serious consideration.
But forgetting may not be such a good idea.

Don't You Dare Kiss Me

The Bible tells us to be gentle.  It tells is to be patient, too, and to forbear with one another.
"I can do that," I think.
When someone cuts in line at the grocery, I can keep my mouth shut.
When I'm picking up socks for the fifth day in a row, I can almost smile.
When I get passed up for a promotion, I can try harder next time.
I'm doing pretty good.
Ha.

How about if the person in the grocery cuts off my arm instead of cutting in line?
What if I must pick up a sword rather than socks?
Or if I get chosen for the gas chamber rather than passed up for promotion?
It gets a little harder, doesn't it?
But Jesus did it, and He did it for Judas, who He knew would sell Him out.

Just before Judas walked out of the upper room to collect his thirty pieces of silver, what did Jesus do?
He prayed for him, he took off his robe, knelt before him to wash his dirty, smelly, betraying feet, and then Jesus fed Judas' conniving body with His own body and blood, the bread of life and the cup of salvation.
He forbore with Judas' outright evil  not only without complaint, but without apparently even noticing. 
And me?
I bristle with annoyance at the hint of a perceived wrong.
I know offense at the smallest slight.

A person who needs a bath needs only wash his feet; his whole body is clean.  And you are not clean, though not every one of you.  You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.--John 13:10, 7

Later you will understand.  Later--like now.
Thank you, Jesus, for training me with socks and checkout lines.
And please, please forgive my sad selfishness.

The Real Zombie Walk

Everybody's talking about a coming zombie apocalypse.
I used to think they were joking.

After all, what is a zombie?
The dictionary says it is "the body of a dead person given the semblance of life, but mute and will-less, by a supernatural force, usually for some evil purpose."
Colloquial observation  tells me that a zombie is a mindless, soulless, automaton. Neither reason nor sentiment affects it.  Kill one if you can, because nothing else will stop it.

Don't think you've run up against a zombie lately? 
You have. 
Every time we see someone intentionally follow a course they know is wrong or destructive.
Every time someone refuses responsibility they know is rightfully theirs.
Every time someone denies obvious truth or reason.
Every time someone does wrong because someone else has. 

Take a close look at their blank stare. You've seen it before, and often. 
 And what's worse, we've been warned:
They refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears.--Zechariah 7:11
They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.--2Timothy 4:4
Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes.--Isaiah 6:10
To whom can I speak and give warning? Who will listen to me? Their ears and closed so they cannot hear.--Jeremiah 6:10

People who function without thought, without reflection, without reason--they are the zombies. They probably won't groan or wear that telltale blood on their shirt, but they are zombies nonetheless. 
And, in their own way, they are just as dangerous.

The Only Miracle

Jesus, the very Power of God, showed the world who He was in part by performing miracles.
To do this, He had to approach the filthy and festering, the poor and vile.  They were all the same to Him.
They were sinners who needed His miracle.
And so am I.
I need His miracle, too.

This is what I ask of my God--
As You made them see again, give me sight.
As You made them hear, open my ears to holy Truth.
As You made them walk, keep my steps turned toward your leading.
As You cured withered hands, keep mine devoted to your service.
As You raised them from dead, keep me in new life.

Now, Christ healed generously in kindness and compassion, but I know that part of the healing is my responsibility.  I have, in this transaction, something to do, too.
I must truly desire change.
What do you want me to do for you?--Mark 10:51
That is the hardest part.
I must want the miracle so badly that I stop being what I am, what I have nurtured and built in myself, the only 'me' I know.

Instead, I must zealously follow Him, look for Him, desire Him.
I must trust Him.
I must listen.
I must love Him with my whole heart, soul, and mind.

Then I will receive the real miracle.
There is, after all, only one.
It isn't the healed hand or the seeing eye or the sure step.
The miracle is only and always the glimpse of Himself that He brings every day.
Say only the word, and my soul shall be healed.--Matthew 8:8

Slaughter of the Innocents--Why, God?

Can you hear them?
Keening in the lonely nights.  Desperate clinging to what is no more.  Sweet, cooling flesh.
God did not stop them, the soldiers who came with swords.

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.  Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: "A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, for her children are no more."--Matthew 2:16-18

The children died without having lived, and they haunt us.
And it happens still.
We don't understand--not then, not now.

I don't know why this happens, but I hear the children's cry, the cry quieted forever almost before it is uttered.  And I weep for them, too--for all of them.
But at the same time, I know that they are spared.  They rest in the one place for which I still long.
They died too soon, too soon, but they will never know what we have to live every day--
the yawning separation, and the long, struggling creep back into God's arms.

Sin--It's Not Just Evil Anymore

Murder. Adultery. Lies. ---Sin.
I recognize them.  They are evil.  All of them.
God says not to do them.  I get it, and generally, do pretty well at it.
But somehow, in the niggling back of my mind, I knew I wasn't done.

Christ showed me why.
He did it in the desert.  Alone, hungry, weak, and bedeviled:
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.--Matthew 4:1
And how did the Master Tempter beguile Him?
...tell these stones to become bread.
...thrown yourself down.
...all this I will give you.--Matthew 4:4,6,9

Satan tempted Jesus with food, with rescue, and with the power He already possessed.  By itself, none of these things were bad.  Christ, in another situation at another time, could have reached out and taken any one of them without sin. 
But not then.  Not there.

And so it is for us.
Sin does not come only in the footsteps of evil deeds like murder or deception or betrayal.
It comes at the dinner table, at our desk, in our bed.
In perfectly innocent-sounding activities, but ones God has forbidden in that place and time.

We fast by God's command and forsaking a fast is sin.
That donut, or that nap, or that good-looking charitable activity, is not evil by itself, but today, it might be sin.
Even Jesus had to look at something He wanted in His flesh, something He might have the next day or the one after that but right then, He, like we, had to look it in the eye and say,
Away from me, Satan!--Matthew 4:10

The beauty of all this comes when we look away from the thing dangling before us, that temptation, and see what God wanted us to see in the first place, the whole point of the exercise:
Himself.


And, after we have seen, He sends His angels to minster to us.

What We Should Be

A while back, the US Army ran an ad campaign that urged potential soldiers to "Be all You Can Be."
Good advice, I thought.  And not just for soldiers, but for anyone.
But maybe I was wrong.  At least some of the time.

After all, Jesus wasn't.
Christ Jesus, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death–even death on a cross!--Philippians 2:6-8

When He became a man, Jesus was not all He could be.
He is God.  He reached His potential when He created the world, when He defeated Satan, and will do so again when He comes back to finally reclaim this world.
As a man, Jesus was clearly underachieving.

So, in following Jesus' example, are we ever to do the same?
Maybe.
Why did Jesus do it, anyway?
...the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.--John 14:31

And if that meant to lay aside His Godhead and become a man, so be it.
What does that look like for us?
If I love God and He wants me to teach someone how to fish rather than do the fishing myself, I must.
If I love God and He wants me to lay aside my leadership or capability in favor of a husband or an employer, I must.
If I love God and He wants me to let someone fail rather than bail them out, I must.

God gave us all gifts, but we are to exercise them only as God commands.
I not only have to consider what I can do, but must stop to think whether I should.
Perhaps the right slogan should not read "Be All You Can Be" but "Be What the God You Love Wants You to Be."