Christian Living

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Coming Up Short
© 2010

by

Stephen A. Peterson


Whenever one travels to a land never visited, many of us have an expressed desire to experience the everyday activities of the inhabitants. Such an opportunity availed itself to United States First Lieutenant Rodney Sneed. Lieutenant Sneed decided to visit an out of the way village near Mosul, Iraq. There he observed a middle aged looking man working vigorously to fashion wooden beams to build a structure. From a distance, the beams appeared perfectly formed and aligned to perfection. However, the closer the Lieutenant came to the structure, it was evident the beams were not smooth, not lined up in an even row or of similar lengths.

So it is with each and every one of us and our imperfections. Our family, friends even enemies see them the closer they come to learn our personality and our behaviors. You can’t see them and when told them we tend to reject any notion that they exist.

Coming closer to Christ in prayer and Biblical study, our imperfections become apparent but manageable. We come to recognize that we are sinful and unable to truly measure up to Christ. Christ’s genuine unconditional love, non-political motives and willingness to forgive any sin we commit reveals the tiniest of sin in every act of our daily living. Jealousy, gossip, silent indignation and the like are exposed. Regardless of who we are and how good one thinks they are our common thread is that we sin and do so daily.

John the Apostle wrote in his epistle: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” (I John 1: 8—NIV). However, we are extremely fortunate that we have an advocate—Jesus Christ who did and continues to be in our corner before the Father.

When we, through faith, come before God to confess our shortcoming, the building may continue even though our beams are not perfect.

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