During the season of Lent we are invited to focus purposefully and intentionally on our spiritual journeys. We have the opportunity to reflect more deeply and make new choices and new commitments that will allow us to know God better and love God’s people more. Our daily email devotions are intended as one step in that process for all of us.
The theme of these devotions for last week and again this week has been “Sin, Confession, and Forgiveness.” The written devotions have given us time to ponder the ways we have broken our relationship with God, have said or done things that violate what God asks or who God calls us to be. Through the devotions we have all been urged to look more deeply into our own lives, to confess those areas that we know are displeasing to God, and to seek God’s forgiveness and reconciliation.
As I ponder the enormity of this challenge and realize it’s not a one-time thing but something we should do continuously, I’m led to ask, “Is there a supposed goal or destination in doing this?” Today’s Scripture reminds us that as we seek right relationship with God through confession and forgiveness, God is making us into new creatures. We are not yet completed because God is not yet finished with us. Throughout our lives, we will be shaped and molded each day to become a bit more like Jesus. Confession and forgiveness are key elements of the way that God shapes us. He makes us new. He makes us alive. He makes us more like the person He created and called us to be and less like the sinful, selfish person we have become. We are made new for the sake of living out our new identity as God’s forgiven child.
Frederick Buechner, one of my favorite authors, says it this way: “But little by little… the forgiven person starts to become a forgiving person, the healed person to become a healing person, the loved person to become a loving person.”
May God continue today the work that He has started in each of us. May God continue today to make us forgiving, healing, and loving people.