Thursday, May 11, 2006
Not As Silly As You Might Think
| Your Deadly Sins |
| Sloth: 40% |
| Gluttony: 20% |
| Pride: 20% |
| Wrath: 20% |
| Envy: 0% |
| Greed: 0% |
| Lust: 0% |
| Chance You'll Go to Hell: 14% |
| You will die while sleeping - and no one will notice. |
When I first ran across this little quiz at If I should fall from grace with god... I thought it a bit trivial - I took it on a lark. While it is not ultimately revealing or anything when the results appeared, my response was not giggles, but conviction.
We have all gotten so wrapped up in the idea that sin is a state and not an action, that we often forget to take stock of where we fall short of God's standards. Of course, absent God's grace, such a stock-taking is truly a wasted exercise, but with that grace there is much to learn.
Prayerful confession is just such a stock-taking. I think we let the Roman Catholic tradition of priestly confession inform how we think of confession a little too much. We Protestants have little to fear in the act of confession. We sit down with God and talk about where we are screwing up today. There are no Hail Mary's or rosaries for us, no we simply get to experience a new touch of God's grace has He says to us, "It's all right - how do I help you not have that issue today?" You see God's grace not only forgives those actions but supplies the power to overcome them.
I think I've shared before on the blog how in a very dark period I swore never to return to church and yet God had me there, in the pew, Sunday after Sunday. I don;t know if I have shared that during each of those Sunday's I sat in church against my "better" judgement - one part of the service always touched me, always spoke to the gospel to me. It was the Assurance of Pardon.
The Corporate Prayer of Confession changed every week, sometime unison, sometimes responsive, sometimes read silently, but the Assurance of Pardon that follwed was the same every week - week after week. They were spoken each week by someone that has become a friend of mine in the intervening decades. They speak to me to this day.
This also, I think speak to the POWER of the liturgical. The repetition served not to rob the words of meaning, but to grant them extraordinary meaning. Nothing give me greater joy in serving my church today than when I serve as litrugist and can repeat these words for the congregation. I hope they offer the same grace to them as they do to me. I trust you will recognize them as scripture
God proves His amazing love for us in this, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. If we confess our sins, He is faith and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.Related Tags: sin, confession, assurance of pardon, liturgy, grace
