Why is it that we think God demands perfection of us?  It is funny when you think about it, isn't it?  We have a tradition of calling God "Father" and of parentifying God in our own minds, but then we don't allow God to be as compassionate toward us as is likely.  For those of us who have been parents, when did we EVER have the illusion that our kids would behave or perform perfectly?  That is folly and we all know it!

And yet how many times do we all assume God is taking us to the proverbial woodshed because we failed to do something perfectly.  I am not talking about a huge moral failure, but the everyday attempts we make to get life right, to be kind and compassionate, to be diligent and follow Jesus' lead.  We all fail regularly, and many of us then fall for the understanding of God as intensly punitive, angry, or vindictive...when it comes to us!  We speak on Sundays of a kind and loving God, of one who definitely has set before us an ethical and moral code to follow.  But when we fail despite our best efforts because we are firmly very human, we sometimes manage to twist our personal version of God from that gentle guiding hand into a profoundly impatient punisher.

Living as Jesus taught is about waking up every morning and trying our best to bring light into the dark places.  It is also about getting that wrong sometimes, self-correcting, and trying again.  It is about offering ourselves the grace we talk about every Sunday and we often offer others, but then forget God has offered it to us as well.  We beat ourselves up, we grow discouraged, we see only our failures.  But God looks upon us and, I believe, sees our hearts...our effort...our desire to be good,d ecent, faithful human beings, and urges us on to keep trying each and every day, knowing that setting the bar high means that even if we don't hit the mark each and every time, we will absolutely hit it far more frequently than if we have no bar at all.

After all, "faithful" and "perfect" are NOT synonyms, and nowhere in the Bible does God say, "Well done, you perfect servant."

In Light and Love,

Rev. Cindy