Ugly as Sin

In my adult life I have only had English Bulldogs as a pet, three boys to be exact. Owning bulldogs in general comes with a whole host of comments. Most of the time we couldn’t walk them without someone stopping and asking to pet them. Or take pictures of them. But on occasion we would get the comment only a face a mother could love or they are as ugly as sin, OUCH. I mean to each their own, but sin, really, sin is pretty ugly and I personally don’t think my boys were ugly. I happen to think they were pretty handsome. 

Sin, man no one likes that word. It’s pretty rough, but even as a society we deem things as sins. Throwing recycle in the trash. Microwaving a pastry. Wearing stripes with florals. Obviously I have been pretty honest with my sin. Sin is something that separates you from God. It stands in the way like a giant wall. Cool thing is God’s ready to karate kick that wall down, whenever you are ready to say hiyah! For me it was food (how silly does that sound), but really I was choosing myself and slowly it was eroding away at my soul. But as I dig a little deeper for the cause, there’s this line in 1 Samuel 18:9 where Saul is described as having a jealous eye. I can NOT stop thinking about that. I know I mentioned by nature I can be a jealous person. Maybe that’s the root of a lot of sin. Our jealous eyes lead us to sin, not the action of sin, but up in front of it and then we have a choice. Because no matter what in life every day we are faced with 100’s of choices. Do I cut that car off, do I blow through the stop sign, do I call or text that person, do I post that picture, do I eat that doughnut. Sometimes our eyes wander and we lose focus. Like Saul we can be so jealous of what another person has that it can distract us from what we were to accomplish. I think that can happen on the daily. We get lost in our feeds and look at the clock two hours later we are no closer to finishing what we needed to. That’s really the ultimate trickery, the art of distraction. If you are distracted long enough, you can forget about sin and move on, like it never happened, until it happens again. And eventually over time you lose yourself, not all at once, but slowly but surely.

Something I thought about at Easter this year was how Jesus tore the veil. It’s a phrase in many songs, but what does it really mean? Quick answer we no longer have to sacrifice an innocent animal to enter the presences of God. Jesus was the last sacrifice. That His blood pleads our sins. The imagery that my pastor used was so real to me. That He sits at the right hand of God and when we sin, He says, no Father, I paid the price, here’s my blood. He is there watching us and interceding for us because He is love, love covers a multitude of sins. He was love hanging on a tree. Love is sacrifice. I think when we remember this or recognize this we see how we fall short, and how much we need a savior. I couldn’t honestly say that I knew that kind of love before. That I was willing to sacrifice my life for someone else’s because in all honesty we’re selfish, fleshy people. Even when we know Jesus, we can still be selfish. I have learned that no human is exempt from the inner battle. We all face it. That’s where I believe grace enters. When we extend grace to others short comings we can focus less on their failures and just see them for the human being they are. I think as humans we’re notorious for carrying around lists, long lists that we bring up when the time is just right. I think once and for all we need to tear those lists up into tiny pieces and toss them in the wind to be carried off. I have to remind myself that I don’t hold the gavel. I don’t want to be the record keeper because I could never throw the first stone. Reality is none of us could. Moral of the story is if we walk around with our jealous eye we can only see the speck in our neighbors eye and we miss the giant log in our own.

The last thing that blows my mind is that Jesus died when we were still sinners. He knew all along that we would never not be sinners. He didn’t wait until we were perfect and holy enough, but when we still believed in ourselves. His love for us was so great He wanted to pay the price of our sin, which is death. He knows our sin so well because He took it upon himself. He’s literally felt the shame of our sins. Every choice we are ashamed to admit, every failure, even the sad moments that we experience. Every time I think about that I’m amazed, that He still chose to suffer, He tore the veil once and for all. And Jesus doesn’t make us perfect, He is perfect. It’s on us to actually admit we are sinners. It’s on us to make a choice each and every day. Jesus fulfilled His purpose so that we could experience ours.