First, "sin will take you farther than you intended to go."

There is truth in the warning that today's shoplifted candy can become tomorrow's grand larceny. That is why it is so essential that parents kindly and firmly and informatively make their youngster return things stolen and reimburse things broken and take responsibility for the small beginnings. That is why grownups must recognize that uncorrected habits (like wandering eyes and lose tongues) must be owned and changed. Most men entangled in pornography did not imagine that their "innocent" habits would bring them to moral and financial ruin. Most people entangled in a nightmare of interpersonal bitterness did not think that the casual remark during coffee break would take them that far.

Second, "sin will keep you longer than you intended to stay."

When people come to a pastor or counselor for help they often have in mind that there will be a three step solution which will make everything okay in twenty-four hours. It is rarely the case. Most of us can remember a time when we wrestled with the consequences of some sin in our lives and thought for weeks that we would never see the light of day or feel the relief of conscience that we so desperately needed. Sin, like unscrupulous hucksters, is not a gentleman. It will not simply say, "Okay," if told that you aren't interested.

Third, "sin will cost you more than you intended to pay."

Of course, the ultimate penalty of sin is death (Romans 3:23). It was that penalty which Jesus took upon himself when he went to the cross. That penalty, however, is between the soul and God. Sin has surcharges of its own. We call them consequences. A person in a trust relationship with Christ can know that he is not condemned (Romans 8:1) and that God is at peace with him (Romans 5:1) and that the penalty of his sin is paid for (Romans 5:8). However, the consequences of sin in the unfolding story of the person's life are another matter. The damaged lives, the lost opportunities, the haunting regrets – these are the hidden charges which sin plugs in. They do not have anything to do with our relationship with God, but they have everything to do with what could have been in our lives. Someone has said that no one sins with the idea of getting caught. It's true. No one really ever imagines what things will look like when sin presents its bill.

That third thought would lead me to add a fourth, "sin will demand payment at the most inconvenient time." One of the overlooked truths about sin is that it rarely functions like gravity. With gravity – what goes up comes right back down. With sin – what is done often comes back to haunt us much later. That's why God uses the analogy of planting and harvesting when it comes to sin (Galatians 6:7). Just about the time you are offered a significant opportunity you discover that your choices to cheat on your academic studies make you unqualified for what, now, you wish for all the world that you could do. And, even if God grants a major crop failure on some of the things that we have done, there are still the ghosts which remind us of those things we have done and the results here and there which we know would have been different if we had been wise regard to sin.

There are two simple commands which, when heeded, save us from saying "I never thought it would come to this." Fear God (Ecclesiastes 12:13) and hate sin (2 Timothy 2:19).

The whole matter of photogenicity came about recently in a discussion with one of our high school students at the Academy. The fellow was saying that he needed to get a good photograph of himself and, in the process he was making a point of saying that he was not very photogenic. Now you have probably guessed, and correctly I might add, that the guy is a handsome young man whose photographs are a lot better than he thinks. Be that as it may, as the two of us talked we began to roll around the idea that photogenicity may, in the long run, have more to do with the person who takes the picture than the one of whom the picture is taken. I have seen photographs of people which brought out good features in their appearance which were easily missed in simple face to face encounters. I am not talking about the artificial brushing and cropping which make people look like what they are not. I am talking about the way a good photographer can frame a subject to bring out handsome features in the person's natural face.

That got us to thinking about the significance of good framing. A good frame does not draw attention to itself. Rather, it draws the observer's eyes to the picture in the frame. If you are like me you can remember a scene which caught your eye and you wanted to remember it in a photograph. However, when you printed the photograph you were disappointed because the scene looked nowhere as impressive as when you saw it first hand. If a professional photographer had been at your side he could have taken a picture of the same scene and captured the grandeur which you saw. He would have done so by the way he framed the central object of the photograph. That framing would involve more than the perimeter of the shot. It would also include depth features, like a branch up close, which would highlight a mountain far away. Photographers know how to do that.

As my friend and I continued to think on these things we remembered together that God designed each of us to be the frame which would represent Jesus Christ to the world around us. God is the photographer, we are the frame and Jesus is the one whose photogenicity is being highlighted. The frame of the picture involves the features of our personal character which we allow God's Spirit of develop (Galatians 5:22-23). The frame also involves the features of our individual stories – the triumphs and tragedies, the adventures and monotonies which can highlight the aspects of the character of Christ which God is developing in us. This is the gist of Romans 8:28-29 where the "all things" of verse twenty-eight have as their objective conforming us to the likeness of Jesus Christ in verse twenty-nine. We can choose, if we want, to draw attention to the frame by complaining about the trials and taking personal pride in the triumphs. Or, we can choose to turn attention to our God and thus heighten the photogenicity of Jesus Christ in the eyes of others. It is not that we make Jesus more photogenic. It is that we allow God to use the frame of our lives in a way which will cause onlookers to see things in Jesus that they might not have noticed had they not met us.

I am going to give a copy of this meditation to my friend because I want him to know that already I can see things in him which, if he will accept the servant role of a frame, will cause others to see Jesus better than they would have seen them without him. If in some way you have found these thoughts helpful I would love to be able to pass on some of your thoughts to him as a way of letting him know that a simple conversation with an old preacher was used by God to bring something useful into the lives of people he may never meet this side of Heaven.

It should not happen. However, given the bizarre character of the fallen human heart, no doubt it has happened somewhere, sometime. Imagine a child from infancy being taught that her right hand is her left hand and that her left hand is her right hand. Imagine that child being taught that yellow is red and that green is pink. Imagine her being taught that the song goes, "Old MacDonald had a farm, f-j-f-j-p."

Imagine, also, the significant change in thinking which would be required for that little girl, as a grown woman, to develop a new and correct way of thinking. The song, of course, would not be a problem. One of our boys was able to correct that bit of misinformation quite quickly. (Yes, his father did that to him.) But to have to unlearn and relearn right and left, the identity of colors, the correct arrangement of numbers and the like would be enormous and would not easily be overcome. If someone were to foist such a travesty of wrong thinking on a little one the crime should fall in the category of mental abuse.

Yet, just such a colossal gambit of misinformation has been foisted on the human race ever since the day when Satan told a woman in a garden that disobeying the God who made her would raise her into the godhood herself. Ever since that day man has suffered under the incessant barrage of propaganda which tries to convince him that good is evil and evil is good, that light is darkness and darkness is light.

One of the most tragic examples of such misinformation is found in the heart of a child who has been told by his parents that he is stupid or that she is ugly. Such humbug takes deep roots in the youngster whose guardians believe that the way to push him to achieve is to call him a failure and a loser. When these children grow to adulthood their outlook on life is as disoriented as if they had been told that their right hand is their left. But there is more. There are those who are told that one must measure up to earn God's favor. There are those who have been counseled that the reason God will have nothing to do with them is because they are too bad for him to care. There are also those who have been told that material wealth is always a sign of blessing and that problems are a proof that God does not love them.

These and so many other areas of maladjustment in thinking are what a person must confront and correct when he enters a trust relationship with Jesus Christ. In fact, the very matter of entering that trust relationship involves putting away the measuring up paradigm. There is no way we can measure up. We have already violated the standard (Romans 3:23) and the penalty for that violation is death (Romans 6:23) not correction. To enter a trust relationship with Christ and become accepted into God's family has to do with trusting what Jesus did for us rather than what we can do for ourselves (Ephesians 2:8-9). After coming to that point, life becomes a growing process in which we move into a mindset which serves God in response to his gracious love rather than a mindset which serves him in hopes of getting him to love us.

One of the most difficult areas of ministry and, yet, one of the most exciting, is the process of helping a person, spiritually, to understand that left is left and right is right and good is good and evil is evil. It is heart wrenching to watch someone struggle with this process of repentance – the changing of one's mind. But it is also exhilarating to watch the eyes brighten in those glorious "ah-HA" moments when a readjusted thought pattern falls into place.

Where are you in relation to your need to cast down false reasonings and to bring every thought captive to the obedience which is in Jesus Christ? (2 Corinthians 10:5)

I have tried for a long time to construct an analogy which would help me grasp the folly of being mad at God. As a general rule I would say that it was like shaking one's fist at an oncoming train. More reflection, though, has made me aware that such an illustration actually helps to give credibility to the basic problem which leads us to think that we can justify our anger.

That basic problem has to do with our concept of God as being God because he is bigger than we are. In our thinking he is either like us only bigger or else he is unlike us and bigger. In either case bigness is the issue. This bigger paradigm is behind the clever gambit which is used to entertain many college freshmen – If God can do anything, can he make a rock too heavy for him to lift? When we speak of God's omniscience (all knowing-ness) and his omnipotence (all powerfulness) and his omnipresence (everywhere present-ness) we tend to visualize those attributes, albeit awkwardly, in terms of size.

Permit me to suggest a different model. Think back with me to the first reference to God in Scripture. There, in the creation account, we are told that God's Spirit brooded on the face of the waters. Throughout the Scripture God takes to himself the quality of spirit. Jesus stated emphatically that God is spirit (John 4:24). In both the Hebrew and the Greek the word "spirit" also has to do with wind or breath or air. When God created man he breathed into him the "breath" of life. When a person is born again into the family of God the event is described as being born of the Spirit and is compared to the moving of the wind (John 3:8). In Acts 17, when Paul was talking to pagan philosophers on Mars Hill in Athens, Greece, he said of God that in him we all live and move and have our being.

No, God is not the wind. I am not speaking of pantheism. I am speaking of analogy. In the material world, just about the only thing which corresponds to how God describes himself is air. It is in air where we live and move and have our being. We can hide from light, but we cannot hide from air. We can survive without food for days. We cannot survive without air at all. Even when we hold our breath it is the lingering air in our system which keeps us from collapsing on the spot. Rain may fall on the just and the unjust, but wherever people are, air is, and it is indiscriminate in its life-giving generosity. Air fills the lungs of the person rescuing a child from degradation as well as the lungs of the person who murder's his infant daughter.

To become angry with God, therefore, is not like being angry at an oncoming train. It is like being angry at air. God is not important to us because he is bigger than we are. He is important because we cannot survive without him. He calls for our worship because a proper awe and respect for him brings us into all that we can be and become. If air could be imagined as a personality which was willing to communicate with us, we might imagine it saying something like - "I am Air, you shall replace me with nothing else. You shall not combine me with pollution when you inhale me. You shall not pollute the air which enters your neighbor's lungs. He who loves me loves life. He who hates me loves death."

Of all of the analogies which God uses to help us understand who he is (Father, Lord, Rock, Shepherd, etc.) it is the fact that he is spirit which encompasses the totality of our dependence on him and his goodness to us. Maybe, then, we should revisit the song in Disney's "Pocahontas" – "Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?" Maybe, if we could see the workings of air and wind (and not just the consequences) we would be totally awestruck. There is no doubt that if we could get even a glimpse of God as Job and Isaiah did, we would be more than awestruck.

Returned to Sender

A book which I would eagerly recommend for your devotional reading would be James MacDonald's work, "Gripped by the Greatness of God." It is one of those books which jars the reader with salient thoughts which can have wide ranging impact. One such thought is found on page 106 of that book. The author pulls up an account from 1826 when two men were sentenced to be executed as the result of a crime against the government. Apparently an appeal was made by someone after the first man was hanged. In response to the appeal, the President of the United States issued a pardon for the second man.

This is when the story took a strange twist. The man who had been pardoned refused to accept that pardon! This created quite a stir. Over the next three years the issue found its way to the United States Supreme Court. The decision handed down by Chief Justice John Marshall can be found at http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/pardons4.htm (United States v. Wilson 1833). It was the first Supreme Court decision to be handed down with regard to pardons. The decision stated in part, "A pardon is an act of grace, proceeding from the power entrusted with the execution of the laws, which exempts the individual, on whom it is bestowed, from the punishment the law inflicts for a crime he has committed."

Having said that, the Justice then added, a few sentences later, "A pardon is a deed, to the validity of which delivery is essential, and delivery is not complete without acceptance. It may then be rejected by the person to whom it is tendered; and if it be rejected, we have discovered no power in a court to force it on him."

"Delivery is not complete without acceptance." I do not know if Justice Marshall saw any connection with what he wrote and the message of the good news of forgiveness and life offered by Jesus Christ. The connection, however, is striking. Forgiveness and welcome into the family of God are not simply "givens." The idea that God is a God of love and therefore everyone will ultimately be delivered from the penalty of sin is not doable either in the context of God's sovereignty or man's free will. The benefits of God's love demonstrated by Christ's death in the sinner's place on Calvary do not belong to those who return the offer unopened.

We think it strange that a man would not accept the offer to escape being hanged. But is it not even more bizarre that the multitudes of the human race have not even sought to know if there might be hope of forgiveness from God which would free them from the ultimate sentence of eternal hell? And, of those who have heard that the offer is there, is it not amazing that multitudes have rejected it?

In the words of Chief Justice Marshall, "if it be rejected, we have discovered no power in a court to force it on him." In the words of Jesus, "Whoever believes in him (the Son of God) is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son." Or, as the prophet Ezekiel put it, "As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn form their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die?"

There's the question. "Why will you die?"

Let's take those issues in reverse order. A friend of mine (a high school senior who really likes to think) has been tackling the question of love and rules of conduct - If there is a genuine love relationship should rules need to exist since love rules? It is an interesting question to consider over a cup of coffee which, by the way, we did. Here is where I am at this point in our ongoing consideration.

First Timothy 1:9 says in part – "The law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient... " (English Standard Version) Another way of putting that could be – "Rules are not needed for those who can be counted on to do that which is good and right. Rules are for those who have no moral compass and enjoy doing the opposite of what is expected" (hhcomings paraphrase).

What I believe that statement is telling us is that if perfect love existed between two people or among a group of people, there would be no need for rules because each would be guided by the moral principle of love which does no harmful thing to one's neighbor (Romans 13:10). However, because such perfect love does not exist in any human heart and since there are those who are guided by a spirit of self-centeredness, rules will have to be expressed and implemented and enforced.

That having been said, it is the heart objective of a person in a trust relationship with Jesus Christ to become more and more the kind of man or woman for whom such rules do not need to be made. The person who has begun to grasp the magnitude of God's redeeming love has a growing appreciation for what Jesus meant when he said that all of the rules that God made (the law and the prophets) hang on two basic commands – love God and love your neighbor (Matthew 22:40). That person has also begun to experience the point made by the Apostle John in First John 4:18 – "one does not have to look over his shoulder wondering if God is out to get him if he knows God's love. Full grown love casts out such fear because love and fear are incompatible. The person who is living in a fear relationship with God has not matured in his understanding and application of love in his life" (hhcomings paraphrase).

However, there are also rules which come into existence because of love (or at least because of respect) for others – rules mandated by love. I would call these rules of order as opposed to rules of moral relationship. For example, the cultural rule in the United States which dictates that we drive on the right hand side of the road has to do with regulation more than relationship. There in nothing inherent in relational love which makes it instinctive to drive on the right. In England the population drives on the left. In a context where someone is responsible for the orderly function of a group of people that person would need to implement certain order-related rules which would guide the group in accomplishing their goal. It would be unloving not to do so. Love will both create and submit to such rules because the individual recognizes the need for the order and efficiency which can help others as well as one's self work in harmony. Thus, when love rules as a desire of the heart for the good of others there will be love rules which will help all to function well in areas where love in and of itself does not provide the instinctive course of action needed to function usefully together.

The phrase, "on the basis of the mercies you have received," provides the logical base for presenting our bodies to God (Romans 12:1) and setting for ourselves the agenda of reformatting our thinking (Romans 12:2). If we do not pass through that wall, the conditions of the grace atmosphere of fellowship with God and God's people become simply a collection of uncomfortable and confusing reqire,emts which do not fit with the way we think things should be done.

This is a wall because it has to do with experience based on truth. Confronting the matter of making decisions on the basis of mercies received is not merely acting on academic information. Most of us are relatively comfortable with the idea of "grace" in its academic form. We are not too troubled to say that we did not deserve something like, say, another person's friendship. However, experiencing a sense of "mercy" adds a disconcerting dimension to grace. It takes "I do not deserve" to the region of "I am not worthy."

Jesus gave us two striking illustrations of the "not worthy" character of mercy. One was in the question he asked a Pharisee (Luke 7:41-47). The question had to do with who would be the most grateful, a person who had been forgiven a debt amounting to one hundred work weeks at minimum wage, or a person who had been forgiven a debt amounting to five work weeks at minimum wage. Assuming that both men were in the same overall financial condition, the common sense response was, of course, the one who had been forgiven most would be the most grateful. His gratitude would take into consideration the fact that the creditor had given him something which he did not deserve and something for which he was not worthy. That gratefulness rising out of a sense of unworthiness would result in acts of worship which have little to do with what we call "worship" today.

The second illustration had to do with a wasteful son who trashed all that he had and returned home repentant, destitute and with the stench of a wanton reputation (Luke 15:11-32). This son, embraced by his father and welcomed freely into the home's grace atmosphere found himself the recipient of something for which he was totally unworthy. That unworthiness was underscored by his older brother who, quite convinced of his own personal worthiness, could not endure the grace and mercy that was being lavished on his derelict kid brother.

I am not sure that we accept that unworthiness very well either – especially when it comes to our estimations of ourselves. In fact, there is a lot of self-righteousness in the ranks of those of us who profess that we believe that Jesus died for us. All it takes is an issue of personal rights or preferences or chagrin at someone else's failures to reveal that we have not embraced the humility of spirit that follows a recognition of having received from God that for which we were (and are) unworthy. Even in holding to truth which compels us to stand away from someone bent on error, we are frequently found to do so with an attitude which betrays a certain degree of self-satisfaction. It does not matter if we are a religious elitist or a committed immoralist, the self-righteous aversion to thoughts of personal unworthiness keep us from passing through that invisible wall which opens to us the experience of the grace atmosphere which God offers in Christ.

That does not mean, however, that I am a non-contributor. I listen, I seek to encourage and I try to offer hope and vision. I also, at times, will say to a young fellow, "There's something I really need to talk to you about." Then, before proceeding farther, I will ask, "Do you trust me?" The reason that I ask that question is that I have adopted a role of encourager rather than commander in the lives of the young people with whom I interact. Therefore, if at all possible, I will look for ways of working around the rational and emotional road-blocks that often exist between a person and a truth they need to consider.

The reason I bother to tell you all of that is because I want to make a comment about something that is really beginning to raise more than yellow flags in my thinking as I listen to conversations among guys I enjoy thoroughly. I have begun to address the matter with several of these new-generation friends, and I would like to bring it up to a broader audience with the hope that we might all find some grace-filled ways (Colossians 4:6) to confront the matter.

The area of my concern has to do with that genre of games which involve shoot-to-eliminate scenarios. I call it shoot-to-eliminate because, as a general rule, elimination is the objective of the game whether it's dodge-ball or paint-ball or air-soft. The team with the most players at the end of the game wins.

What I hear happening, however, is a cross-over from shoot-to-eliminate to shoot-to-kill. No, no one is being actually "killed." However, in the case of computer scenarios, the death scenes seem to be becoming much more graphic and intense. And, in the paint-ball and air-soft settings I am hearing more and more laughter over this one or that one getting hurt. There is a considerable difference between bang-bang-I-gotchya-you're-out, and bang-ha-ha-look-at-him-squirm-and-hear-him-yell. When that line is crossed human life is profaned (treated as cheap), which may explain why the word I hear is that there also tends to be a trend toward profane speech as well at these events.

Can we imagine that Christian freedom would let us think God would have been represented well by disciples of Christ going to the coliseum to watch people being torn apart by lions as long as the people being torn apart weren't other Christians? I believe the spirit of the emerging age is going to call upon believers in Christ to say that being entertained by the spectacle of people hurting and dying has crossed a line and does not provide an atmosphere in which individuals are being built up (1 Corinthians 10:23).

In a world where there are people who could use some real heroes, I would urge that shoot-to-eliminate games be kept within the framework of occasional recreational events. In the spare time that is created, perhaps efforts could be invested in learning how to come to the rescue of real people who are in real need of real champions.

"The wagon of opportunity travels on the wheels of the routine along the path of the common."

Perhaps one of the greatest fears which besets those of us in Western cultures today is the fear of the routine. We are fast becoming so obsessed with the need for the stimuli of visual and audio thrills that we are driven to avoid anything that smacks of the ordinary. It seems that so much of what we have to do has to be high energy and rapid-fire and constant. As the drunkard lives for his next drink (Proverbs 23:35), so we live for our next game or tune or movie or some other artificial thrill. The problem with escaping the routine through an obsession with the enticements of virtual reality is that when the opportunities of the real world come along we find ourselves unprepared for them. Thus, John Lennon was not far off the mark when he said, "Life is what happens while we are making other plans."

No, I am not issuing a call for living in a rut or developing a spirit of complacency. What I am trying to do is to challenge our thinking along the line of owning our routines rather than enduring them. Since most of life is lived in the routine events of common day-to-day experiences, it would seem that we would be wise to learn how to buy up the opportunities of the routine moments so that we will be prepared for the more meaningful opportunities when they come (Ephesians 5:16; Colossians 4:5) Jesus told us that it is in being faithful with those things which seem least that we demonstrate our readiness to be trusted with the great things (Luke 16:10). Learning how to use times of silence and days of predictability gives us the capacity to be ready when the wagon of opportunity rounds a corner and we find ourselves confronted with an authentic adventure. The person who uses his routine time to plug in moments of learning and relational development and creative thought will find himself better prepared for where his path takes him than will the person who tries to fill his trip with artificial adventure which narrows his capacity for personal growth.

Oswald Chambers may have been thinking of time as well as geography when he wrote, "Do not say you can be of no use where you. It is certain that you can be of no use where you are not."

I am told that a doctor once advised a young man – "You have a choice. You can become a great singer or a great pipe smoker." To become the great singer, of course, meant putting away the immediate gratification of the pipe and replace it with the routine of training and practice. By ditching the pipe and accepting the routine the man was able to experience real opportunity. Put in more contemporary terms, "You have a choice. You can become a real person with a real capability to have an impact on your world, or you can become a great movie-goer or iPod listener. Last time I checked very few want-ads call for virtual heroes.

I guess all of this amplifies what was said so long ago – "He who works his land [accepts the routine responsibilities of farming] will have abundant food [opportunities for which he is prepared], but the one who chases fantasies [virtual realities but not real realities] will have his fill of poverty [missed opportunities which he discovered too late to be something he would have wanted someday]" (Proverbs 28:19 – brackets added by this writer).

I am not sure, however, that fornication is such a non-issue as some want to imagine. As I watch the reaction of people in a wide range of social circles when some unmarried girl is discovered to be expecting, I almost always find a period of awkwardness and sly remarks. The responses become more serious, of course, when the circle involves those of us in a trust relationship with Jesus Christ, just as it was a more serious matter among religious Jews than among the pagan Greeks and Romans.

I am wondering if we who call ourselves "Christians" should take time once in awhile to address how we respond to those who have engaged in fornication. Is there something to be discovered in Joseph's determination not to make Mary a public example (Matthew 1:19)? Should this have any bearing as we establish "disciplinary" paradigms for "dealing with" fornication in the lives of others?

It sometimes seems to me that our concern with fornication has to do with whether or not a baby has been conceived. From the beginning of recorded history society has looked askance at a child whose parents were not married. General knowledge that someone has been sexually promiscuous does not become a matter of public outcry until conception has taken place. It is as though we read Romans 3:23 to say, "The wages of sin is a baby." The woman who gets pregnant is considered to be "in trouble." Thus, a baby becomes a kind of punishment from God. In fact a child can tend to look at himself as being an "accident" or worse, a "mistake." All of this places the mother in the cross-hairs of calls for some kind of public reprimand so that others will "learn a lesson."

Learn a lesson? I am suspicious that the "lesson" which is learned from treating pregnant unwed moms as "public examples" does not exactly line up with the grace atmosphere which permeates the New Testament. Yes, I know that we are prone to quote 1 Timothy 5:20 which reads, "those who sin are to be rebuked before all so that others may fear." Our reasoning is that the "lesson" that is taught will go something like this – "Wow! What a person has to go through to get back in the good graces of her local church is awful. Sin is serious. I'm never going to do anything like that." However that "lesson" depends a lot on the character of the "good graces" of the local church. If someone picks up on gracelessness in the actions of the church the conclusion is more apt to be, "If this is what it means to be a Christian forget it. I don't care what they think of me. I'll do as I please, thank you. Who needs the church?" Thus our public example actually becomes a door for alienation. It can provide the crack in the door for Satan to lure the one "caught in sin" (Galatians 6:1) to walk away not from God as God but from God as misrepresented by us (2 Corinthians 2:10-11).

I am not talking about excusing sin and saying it is okay. I am talking about creating a set of shame-amplifying procedures in the name of "calling sin 'sin'" so that the caught one has felt the shame of their sin before we will extend grace. Sin, any sin, is serious not because of the church's disciplinary process but because it violates the integrity of God's design. What I am saying is that it is one thing for a sinner to walk away from judgment. It is quite another to walk away from grace. There were laws on the books which Joseph could have cited to have made a public example of Mary. He sought a different course. Did he understand the concept which Paul would one day cite to some who took a "hard line" against sinners? He wrote, "The goodness (graciousness) of God leads to repentance" (Romans 2:4).

"Are there no prisons? Are there no poor houses?" Scrooge's words are harsh and mean spirited. We do not say things like that now. However, I believe we should ask ourselves if we have not fallen into the trap of saying the same things only in a much more politically correct way. For example, "What is the government going to do about?" Or, "What is the church going to do about?"

We in the West live in a culture of faceless bureaucratic irresponsibility. We seek to avoid a sense of personal responsibility by sliding needs over onto the desk of some impersonal "they" who ought to do something about it. If we do put a face on the ubiquitous "they" it may sound like, "What is the President going to do?" Or, "What is the Pastor going to do?" In either case the one face which should be in the statement is conspicuously absent – "What am I going to do?"

From what I find in reading Scripture and watching its principles unfold in the lives of people, the Holy Spirit tends to prompt individuals rather than faceless corporations to generous acts of kindness. Individuals may motivate groups (as Barnabas did the early church in his care for widows and orphans), but groups have little to work with if individuals are not moved to real, personal openhandedness.

And, let it be said, generosity involves more than money. There is in our self-centered, angry, bullying culture a real shortage of generous grace all around. You may not have money to throw at needs to the degree that you would like – or, you may be one of those who has enough money so that you can write a check and feel that you have "done your bit," but there is so much more that needs to be done which does not involve money.

For the desktop wallpaper on my computer I have placed an ad from a publishing company. The ad states, "Two out of three kids quit going to church after high school." Then the ad asks, "What will you do about it?" May I make a suggestion? Decide to turn off your entertainment source and arrange contact with a real kid or neighbor or even a church member whom you hardly know. Love them (generously) where they are. Give them value (generously) through your praise. Earn their trust. Invest in their lives. Guide them to Jesus Christ by representing Jesus Christ to them – authentically and generously.

A friend posted this question on his blog: "What is the most fun thing you have ever done?" My reply – "Watching the changed expression in the face of a person as they realize that you have just said something good about them and meant it."

Thank God for organizations which are available to help us to be generous to people we do not know. But, God help us if we think that a contribution to such organizations means we are generous. May God give each of us a vision of generosity for the season which puts us face-to-face with someone who could use our personal involvement in their life in a meaningful way.

There is no doubt in my mind that grace speaks of atmosphere. Another word we might use for it would be "ambience." That's the fancy word which makes the difference between a diner and a haute cuisine restaurant. Usually you pay a high price for ambience. In the ambience of grace it was Jesus who paid the high price. Ambience in a restaurant often implies suit and tie, formal skirt and heels. In our relationship with God it has to do with an at-home-ness in which our spirits can be at ease and from which our hearts can draw fresh encouragement.

In pondering this empowering potential of the grace atmosphere I put together some characteristics which belong in such an environment. It involves...

Giving others value through love.
Giving others enthusiasm through joy.
Giving others security through peace.
Giving others time through patience.
Giving others motivation through gentleness.
Giving others safety through goodness (i.e. graciousness).
Giving others integrity through faithfulness.
Giving others confidence through meekness.
Giving others hope through self-control.

Imagine a God who would treat us like that!

Imagine a group of people in which such a spirit thrived!

One word comes to mind.

Awesome!