One of my favorite things in the whole world is going to lunch by myself and reading a book (whoa...my introvert is showing). I get so much studying and thinking and processing done when I can steal away for an hour or so. And its nice to have the hustle and bustle of community around me.
Yesterday, I was doing just that and it was awesome. I was reading Speak Love and preparing for some small groups this semester, so I was thinking a lot about human behavior and then I saw the most interesting thing. Fascinating.
I took a break from reading and went to grab some ice cream. There was a boy there, maybe 10 years old and the buddy just wanted some sprinkles on his ice cream. And I can support that, sprinkles make everything better. The problem was that the little guy had only gotten maybe 25% of the sprinkles on his ice cream and the rest were lying on the table around the bowl. It was a MESS. He was trying to clean it up, shoveling the sprinkles into a little pile. I'm not sure what his plan was, but when he saw me standing there he suddenly got really self conscious. He then scraped the chocolate sprinkles into his hand and with sneakiness and embarrassment on his face carefully dropped his hand by his side and dropped the sprinkles on the ground.
Ya'll...this poor kid! I felt bad for him and felt like that one act showed his heart so clearly. And I would know, because I can see 10 year old me doing the exact same thing. Honestly, I do the same thing now, just with life instead of sprinkles. See, some people deal with their sin with a "who cares, let it all hang out kind of attitude." Not me and not my friend from yesterday. We try to clean it up before anyone notices. One of the most interesting parts of what I noticed was that the kid was perfectly calm about cleaning up his mess and dumping it on the floor. He wasn't ashamed of that part. It was when he realized that someone else saw him that he was flustered.
Isn't that exactly how I deal with the mess of my heart? If I can clean up the outside parts and no one notices it, then it doesn't really count. It doesn't matter. It's only when I'm caught that I have to deal with it. Right? Right? Yeah, I know...it doesn't work that way.
The problem is that my offense is against God. Take the boy for example. His mess had nothing to do with me. I wasn't going to have to clean it up whether it was on the table OR the floor. His offense wasn't against me. It was against the employees of the restaurant. They would be the ones responsible for cleaning up and it wouldn't matter where the mess was. It was going to have to be cleaned by them. But the kid was afraid of me. I made him uncomfortable, because I exposed his mess. But, it was never about me.
The mess I make in my life, my sin, has never been about the people around me. It's been about my ugly and faithless heart against a God who loves me. My offense isn't just my behavior, my offense is my heart against a relational God. And no amount of covering up my behavior is going to fix that. I have to go to the Lord and repent, putting my trust in Jesus. Instead of covering my sin, I should grieve over it and in repentance allow Jesus to cover me in his grace.
What about you? When was the last time you grieved over your sin? Do you try to cover up your behavior and not acknowledge your offense against God?
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