repentance

The Youth Director at my field education site is the bomb. A computer guru by day, the man is a brilliant theologian able to speak the language of the busy, hyperstressed teenagers of the Washington Metropolitan area. He synthesizes things in a way that brings things to life for these kids (and for me and my wife) in really neat ways. Last night, another such moment happened as his lenten small group talked about sin.

"The simple definition of sin is anything that takes us away from God." CLICK! For my wife, 26 years of living as a Christian finally made sense. The man made definitions of sin we so often use; lying, cheating, playing cards, drinking, dancing, whatever, are a false construction - sin is anything that takes us away from God. Jesus is he who brings us back into right relationship with God.

We talked about this a lot last night and came up with an image for Jesus. Jesus calls us to repent of our sins (see Lent 3c). The literal translation of the Hebrew word for repent is "to turn around". So we imagined Jesus standing behind us tapping us on the shoulder. In order to speak with him we must turn around. Having done so, Jesus can so easily ask us to join him in a different way. "I know you want to go about this in your own way, but what if we tried this way, I promise it will prove beneficial."

I'm excited that Cassie finally had it all click. It proves the benefit of having a great diversity in the body of Christ. No one previously, myself included, had articulated the act of repentance in a way that Cassie was comfortable with. She could understand what they were saying, but it never really spoke to her. Pastors, parents, friends, family, husbands, fellow church-goers; no one spoke her language, until last night.