September 27, 2011

Beloved:
     The little golden retriever, Rosie Cotton, has learned a new trick and I am sure it holds a lesson about sin.  She is in deep denial about her debilitating addiction to tennis balls.  Convinced there is a tennis ball in the powder room, she searches the room over and over, shutting the door behind her in the process.  Stuck, she sings like a heartsick coyote until someone lets her out.  
At first she’s joyful, but the cravings soon return and she is powerless over them.  If I keep the door shut, she cries to get in.  
     Of course Rosie has no desire to change. She doesn’t know how the door got shut.  She only knows she’s stuck and release requires crying for help. 
Her crying is positively mournful.  
     How many times a day do I find my mind trapped in a web of negative thinking; deprecating to self and others?   Or turning to habits and appetites that numb against the ordinary stresses of living?  Or conversations that edify no one or nothing, but taste so delicious in the moment?   Worse among them, the conviction that by my own will I can break the cycle – that I am not powerless, I don’t need help?  When help is as close as the sound of my turning toward it.  
     Epiphany! The lesson isn’t about sin, but grace.  As our powerlessness grows, so we grow ever nearer to the Loving One who is on pins and needles, delirious with the desire open the door and escort us to the divine reality of our helplessness and God’s grace.   
       I pray this day finds you living fully in the grace of God.  peace & prayers, ~ pastor annette 

       

---