Thought of the Day 07.02.08

As the father of two young boys, my life is not tidy. Spills and messes are a given. So I get the paper towels, and then we clean it up together. If I just let them do it, they would make it worse, but with my help we make it better. Eventually, of course, the goal is that they would both make fewer spills and also be able to clean them up themselves. You might even say that a simple definition of adulthood is being able to clean up your messes.

So we become very attached to that idea, and then we hear about sin. We find out that we are awful, wretched people, and we naturally think, “OK. I’m an adult. I’ll take care of this. I’ll apologize. I’ll give to charity. I’ll do good, and everything will be fine.” But of course the problem is that what seems like help from our perspective is just making the mess worse to God. We need Him to do it for us.

Just as cleaning up your own spills is the starting point of adulthood, knowing that you can’t clean up your own sins is the starting point for Christianity.