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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