In our stage of life the family dining room has been converted into a play room and is always filled with amazing little boy noises like screeching and giggling. Between the Hot Wheels, Dusty planes, and Thomas trains there is always something to step on or better yet engage in imaginative play. It is a parents "joy" to clean these rooms of play and imagination. Tonight is different, I want to leave the toys strewn all over the floor and I even find myself apathetic to the overflow of imagination gear in the living room, kitchen and front sitting room. It would be completely unsurprising to other parents and anyone who has cared for children that this feeling is no different from any other night and unfortunately its result has happened before.
The mess of toys and "imagination gear" that is visible throughout our home tonight and my apathy towards it can easily be likened to our slow apathy to sin. Sin creeps into our lives one room in our heart at a time. Just like toys, we have special nicknames for our sin so that it doesn't feel so neglectful in allowing them to remain - a secret, or "it's just ___" (fill in the blank for your own word). Spurgeon says "A Christian may grow callous so slowly that the sin which once startled no longer alarms". It reminds me of the Lord's words to Cain "sin is crouching at your door, desiring to have you" and so many of us like Cain ignore the wisdom of God to repel the wicked roaring lion.
Relationship with God is how we repel that horrid mane covered beast. If it were not so then Christ would never had made the ultimate sacrifice, yet we have been told that he gave up his own life for the lost, for the beloved, for the sick - the sinner, you and I.
Why then do we allow our relationship to be crowded by the mess of our hearts, the unforgiven sins that keep us from the wonder filled joy of walking step in step with Jesus? So often it comes down to the impossibility of the task of living perfect lives as if God has this expectation of us. God can do the impossible (in our minds) but there is no expectation from God that we can at least not without his divine hand guiding, strengthening and supporting us.
Rather that thinking constantly of the long game - becoming perfect. Perhaps its time to think day to day, hour by hour, moment by moment.
Today is the day to start keeping short accounts with God. Today is the day to releasing the ever plaguing guilt of sin and the burden of carrying the pain of loss from the acts and temptations that reflect our brokenness in the depths of our hearts where only God sees. Today is the day to surrender our excessive and impossible expectations of perfection and look to the one that is perfect to forgive us, to rest in and to share life with.
Tomorrow will be another day filled with toys and cleaning to accomplish because it never ends, life with Jesus is no different and what amazes me day after day is this is what He signed up for. Jesus was prepared for this daily grind of care and support, forgiveness and mourning and He takes joy in it.
I am setting down the computer to tidy, and not just the toys on the floor.
