I do not understand my own actions.
For I do not do what I want,
but I do the very thing I hate.
It is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.
Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Chief!
—from Romans 7.15-25
Our sin isn’t that we’re bad.
It’s that we don’t know how to trust God.
“Original” sin just means we were born that way.
Without trust in God, we’re slaves to our egos,
constantly trying to protect our little individual selves.
We don’t mean to; instinct kicks in, and we’re selfish.
Like Gollum protecting his Precious,
we’re constantly anxious about our self-worth.
It’s a deadening way to live.
The war between good and evil is a cage fight.
We can’t get out. We try to do the right thing,
but keep maiming ourselves. How do we win?
We don’t. God removes us from the fray.
We are forgiven. Nasty, broken, and beloved.
There’s no cage. No fight. Only our needs, and God’s grace.
The call—a gift, yet so hard!— is simply to trust that.
We get free, then crawl back into the cage.
And God removes us again. And bit by bit
we learn to trust. And to live like it.
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ,
the Referee of Love.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording;
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:23 — 3.3MB)