Thought for the week: Ask God to show us where sin lurks in our minds and hearts
This week has been an important one in the ‘church’ calendar – with Ash Wednesday following on – as it always does – from 'Pancake' Tuesday.
The Christian significance of both has almost fallen off the radar of most people in our increasingly secularised society. This really is a great pity, for Ash Wednesday is a clarion call to us forty days before Easter, to be much more aware of wrongdoing, and acknowledge the sinful tendencies that have been ‘hard-wired’ into us since the calamitous rebellion of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
The Bible is crystal clear that we all have ‘sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3.23).
The word ‘sin’ has virtually disappeared from our language, and wrong doing is brushed away rather too easily nowadays. Sometimes described as an ‘error of judgement’ or ‘a moment of madness’ or ‘out of character’. And of course, it is often simply accepted as the norm because "everyone else is doing it". But whatever the reason or the excuse, wrongdoing is always wrongdoing.
It might not make me popular, but I would suggest that Christian people would be helping society to understand itself much better if we started to gradually re-introduce the idea and the language of sin and wrongdoing.
I am absolutely not suggesting that we hammer people with the idea – but that we say that sin is a very good, indeed God given, explanation of why the world, society at large and all of us find ourselves in so much distress and confusion so often. Indeed, I would go further, and suggest that it might even be something of a relief to be told of the origins and reasons for such pain, and such turmoil in the world.
Ash Wednesday is now behind us. But over the coming weeks until the glory of Easter Day, might I suggest that we would all be much the better for asking the Lord to show us where wrongdoing and sin lurks in our minds and hearts, and invite him to deal with it properly so that we really can enjoy Easter resurrection with deep and lasting joy!