Ed, my neighbour next door, has been away the last three weeks. I have missed Ed, in a peaceful, restful way. Frankly, Ed has a few sayings he repeats so often they are like hearing another person crack their knuckles or run their finger nail on a chalk board.
Ed has said the following expressions to me so often I feel like I'm getting tasered each time I hear them: "If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong." "It isn't that you are too old to learn, you aren't smart enough to understand." "I didn't say it was your fault. I said I was blaming you." "I have a bad memory, but a clear conscience."
When I repeat too many of my favourite sayings, Ed either lights up a cigarette and puffs like mad or says he has to get going and takes off. The following are my over worked expressions that Ed is sick of hearing. "That's not what the Bible actually says." "You could be right, but I don't think so." "We all sin far too much daily." "We have a bad memory because the truth hurts."
In fairness to Ed, winter tends to bring out my negative side. It doesn't take much to get on my nerves. The colder it gets, the more my jealousies grow of the animals that sleep through the winter. Even though I love my job, the winter weather gets me feeling the morning shift is too early, the afternoon shift too busy and the evening shift too late. Right now, in the heart of winter, it is nobody's fault it is cold. Yet, I blame my lack of get-up-and-go on the weather. Blaming is a well-developed bad habit that I've mastered through the years.
I'm not proud of my proficiency at blaming. I'm smart enough to understand it is an easy route to take in life. It is a broad smooth way many take. As a child we get asked, "Did you hit your brother?" We don't own up to it - we cover up with blame, "He hit me first." With a bad memory of what actually happened, we blame something else or someone else to give us a clearer conscience.
It is interesting that the Bible makes quick work of any claim we make about being blameless. Scripture says, "There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Only Jesus Christ, God's Son was blameless and God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement. He did this to accomplish our blamelessness before God. By faith in Christ we become blameless in God's sight. The Bible explains it this way, "The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, purifies us from every sin. God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them."
God does not count our sins against us so that we would keep blaming and complaining. His love towards us always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. His love for us does not fail. It keeps no record of our wrongs and no lists of our expressions that drive Him crazy.
