Admitting we have done something wrong is sometimes harder than it seems. If you have ever gone down the wrong way on a one way street, chances are you have been honked at a little, shown a few hand gestures, and probably talked about a little behind those windows of passing cars! If you have ever found yourself using the bathroom clearly labeled for the opposite sex, only to come out, realize your mistake, and see that there are others who have noticed your mistake, you probably felt about two inches tall at that moment. I have done both! There - I owned up to it - think what you will, but mistakes happen, wrong choices get made, and we live with the consequences probably more than we'd ever like to admit. What we do with those wrong choices 'in the moment' makes all the difference.
If we have an intimate connection...
This speaks volumes as there is this idea that it is possible to drift away from intimacy. We all have probably had friends go through a divorce and most will admit they had no idea of how far they had grown apart over the years. The 'drifting' didn't happen all at once, but rather at a very slow pace, picking up speed as time went on, until one day they find they are at the impasse of 'irreconcilable differences'. Plain and simple, when intimacy is maintained, there is a strength that comes from that connection. Lest you think intimacy is limited to the bedroom, it is not. It begins in conversation, time with each other, getting to know each other's interests, doing the little things for another, and being sensitive to their needs. This is what intimacy with God is like, but he isn't the only one in the relationship! It takes two!
If we walk step by step in the light...
Most who have followed me for sometime know that my mom is legally blind. Add to that her advancing age of 101 and the resultant decrease in her mental capacity, you know it is easy for her to 'get lost' even in her own home! Whenever she looks a little lost, I just take her arm, or gently guide her walker in the right direction, while telling her where we are headed. The truth of the matter is that it makes it so much easier for her if we walk 'step by step' - me having the light and ability to see - her not so much. There are all those times when we have been 'lost' in our own steps, not really sure about where we are headed, when God came alongside and merely took our arm and guided us safely into the place we needed to be. Why? He loves and cares for us. We maintain this step by step walk with him by taking his arm when he extends it to us!
If we go around...
Sin has a way of having us 'go around' a whole lot of things in life. We go around truth, light, freedom, and peace. We go around because we aren't able to go through when sin is blocking the path! The way around isn't always all that productive - in fact, it takes way more energy from us than we should have expended on the journey! Mom sometimes goes 'the long way around' to get to the bathroom. She turns left from her chair, going through the kitchen all the way around back to her chair, then finds she still has to travel down the hallway to the bathroom. At her age, any wrong turn is exhausting. I wonder if we realize that every wrong turn in life is equally as exhausting spiritually?
But if we own up...
The greatest turn we can make is the one that we refer to as a 'return'. To 'return' means we have made some turn that requires us to come back to a former place we have been. Arm in arm with Jesus is where we belong. Sin takes us away from that place. Maybe today requires a 'return' for us in some place in our lives where we have allowed a little drift in our intimacy with God. If so, the greatest turn we can make is the one that begins with 'owning up' to that drift! Just sayin!
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