We tell a double story about sin in the church. You sin because of Adam and Eve. When you sin, there are consequences for it. Parent your kids harshly? There will be a cost. Demonstrate unfaithfulness, selfishness, or pride? At some point, it will catch up to you in some way, big or small.
At the same time, we proclaim that by grace we have been saved through faith and not by our works so that no man can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). God wants us to know that we weren’t reconciled by anything we’re capable of achieving on our own.
We have victory over sin, but we’re going to keep sinning and dealing with the consequences of that sin.
So where does that leave us?
Like I mentioned in this post, I often work a night shift just before we leave for our yearly Tobago trip. This time around, I scheduled myself off that weekend, so I tried something else instead. Another gong bath. This time, I went by myself.
Why are you telling me about another gong bath? You could rightly ask. After all, I’ve been to two already, and I’ve written about both. I think the reason why I want to write about this one, too, is that they’re all different.
This post picks up where this one left off.
The night I wrote the post about finding healing, I sat hunched on the sofa over my laptop, with terrible posture.
I’d been resting my stiff neck on a hot pack all afternoon. I had tried to meditate it away, pray over it, and medicate it. I’d talked with the Chaplain about the stress I thought was causing the pain. I’d slept flat on my back to reduce tension, and had done every other thing I could think of, including giving the rest of my family massages. (Fellow women may understand this subtle form of communication?)
I was pretty sure I was going to have to seek professional help in the morning.
If you’ve been to enough Christian concerts and speaking events, this has probably happened to you: a room that is full of people, and full of the Holy Spirit.
If you aren’t a believer, that idea might make you feel uncomfortable, but stick with me. There’s a lot of things about the world that make all of us uncomfortable, and if we can’t let ourselves squirm a little while we try to put ourselves in one another’s shoes, then we should stop asking for acceptance from the people we are secretly (or not so secretly) judging. But that is another blog post altogether.
Today was a real Sabbath.
We finally got our first significant snowfall for the year, in the form of a huge winter snow that cancelled church services, and left us home with nothing to do on a Sunday.
It could have gone either way. Often, when all the kids are home on weekends, the noise and fighting increase. With no structure to their day other than quiet time, they can end up engaging in attention-seeking behaviors with both their siblings and their parents.
Today was different.
