One of my children recently brought home a mid-year report.
It was bad.
At least 4 different subject teachers suggested he was
easily distracted, talked too much in class, and was not performing to
potential.
I was given the report a day after it arrived. It caused a
major argument between my wife and I (the subject of the report was away at a
friends house at the time). I sat down and made big scrawling red marks over
all the bad comments, circling them, and summarizing them at the bottom of the
page.
It seemed to help me cope with the disappointment and anger
I felt.
Still I had to ring him, and express my disappointment over
the telephone. I know he was in tears at the other end. I started to feel bad
about my anger.
He received an appropriate penalty, i.e. loss of technology
rights for a month.
Why is a bad report so confronting?
My spouse prefers to lay blame on teachers, I prefer to lay
blame on the child, but had plenty of blame to lay on my spouse about not
passing the report on sooner. The blame game was flowing. And we are a
Christian family.
It made me think today about Eden. How Adam blamed Eve then
Eve blamed the serpent. They all were punished. We still feel that failure. Not
to mention all our own failures. Every bad report is a subconscious reminder of
our own bad report, our own failures, not living up to what we were created to
be, the extremely large volume of terrible thoughts and actions that Satan has
tucked away somewhere to bring out on judgement day, to show that we belong to
him and not to God.
The unbelievable, amazing thing is that, when Satan opens
that book, each page will be pristine white and blank, then, when he closes it to check again the title on the cover, instead of my name he will read the name
“Jesus”. Because Jesus led a
perfect life and gave it to me. As far as my volume was concerned, it got
sucked into the irresistible gravitational pull of the black hole that was
present in the cross, when Jesus gave up his life for me.
We know our sins are forgiven, yet we often live as though
they are ours to atone for.
Jesus is Lord. He has done it. Amen.
verse 1
Once we were lost
not even a shred of hope,
True joy couldn't live in our
hearts,
All our failures and hurts weighed
us down.
Then Jesus came
and he spoke to us peace from God,
He took all our sin and our shame
and he cancelled it all by his
blood!
chorus
Shout it out, shout it out,
we're so excited,
all our wrongs have been wiped
out,
the Lord has done it!
We're forgiven,
We've been made holy,
Jesus Christ has set us free.
verse 2
Now we've been found,
There's a new joy within our hearts,
though we fall we have grace to
rise up,
and the strong arm of God to
sustain;
double chorus
the Lord has set us free
O-o-o-o
shout it out, shout it out
all our wrongs have been wiped out
We're forgiven,
We've been made holy,
Jesus Christ has set us free.
The Lord has set us free.
