H,
It has been too long but let us move on from excuses quickly. How have you been? I am sorry for the long silence but you know about all that has happened. I have felt too ‘evil’ to approach this. Somehow too guilty and too full of myself at the same time. It is the most curious reaction we have in the human soul that when we fail spectacularly and sit in the dark we start trying to avoid the light. It will only gets worse when we do this but we have that silly pride that tells us that God is all or nothing at once.
This is a lie of course and we know who the great liar is. The solution to our great falls is to always find the great recovery. We are to live transparent lives of grace not ignoble lies of stature. We are digging in the dirt for something real not building molehills for that paper-king of our own making. We have to come back, like the prodigal son, again and again before all is lost. We should never forget that failure is only the opportunity to begin in God again, a little less self-reliant and much more aware of his love.
This is not an opportunity for sin to grow in us or for laxity in pursuing holiness. It has been told as a lie a bit too much that if you let people off the hook by offering unlimited grace you create a gospel that lacks power to change. I have found it is the opposite. When we tell people that they have no room for failure they only create secret rooms to hide those failures in. They cannot be honest in that draconian state so they cannot find truth and then they cannot be free.
God offers something much more. An invitation to go deeper to the root of things. To be found out as you are and still loved, to fall and then fall in love, to find that our many flaws and foibles are a story He is building something beautiful around. The Bible is full of imperfect heroes save one. And that one says to us, over and over again: Go in freedom from sin and self, I do not condemn you. May we learn to hear that voice at every turn and with every fall and until we are perfect at seeing grace, accepting love, and being made whole over a lifetime spent learning to look up at the full stature of God and not down at ourselves.