Thursday, January 31, 2013

Devotion - Thursday, January 31

I was probably only 8 or 9, which would have meant that my brother was 12 or 13.  The snow storm canceled school, but Mama still had to go to work.  We convinced her were were big enough to stay by ourselves; that we didn't need one of the slightly older female cousins to come stay with us.

In the woods behind our house, my brother and a neighbor boy (with some help from me) had built a small cabin, covering it inside and out with black tar paper.  We spent most of the day in the cabin, "roughing it in the snow."  Weeks earlier we had built a stove in the cabin - a tin wash pan with wooden legs nailed to it.  When we decided to build a fire in that stove, we both remembered Mama telling us never to do such a thing.

But we did, and the cabin burned to the ground.

The next Sunday, we were the talk of the congregation.  I acknowledged to mother that I got a sick feeling in my stomach every time someone commented on the fire or asked questions about how it happened.  "That is what guilt feels like," she told me.  

I also remember Pastor Lippard changing the tone of the conversations.  "How wise of them to call the fire department, and not merely run and hide from their mistake."  I was too young to realize what he was doing.  He was introducing a word of grace into a situation over run with guilt.

I made a similar mistake last night.  I seeking to help the kitchen crew I put a drying pad on the oven while also managing to knock the control button on.  There was a small fire; Hannah and Ben noticed and put it out - probably minutes before it became a huge fire.  All through the night, I kept replaying the events in my mind.  And I had those feelings of deep guilt.

As a pastor, it is good for me to pay attention to such feelings.  Only by remembering my own fault, my own most grievous fault, am I able to be pastoral with others who confess their guilt to me.  When (hopefully) forgiveness is expressed, I am able to understand the power of those words, "God has forgiven you, and so have I."

Forgive me if I have turned this devotional offering into a protracted confession with some misguided aim of obtaining cheap absolution.  That is not my intention. It seemed to be too good a situation to speak of guilt (undeniable guilt) and the ways in which God's servants assure us that we are forgiven.  If this proves to be true for a bumbling campus pastor, it can serve as a reminder that it is true for all of us.

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