A Bruise

Failure is a Bruise

Not a tattoo.

I know some pretty wonderful people who have made a few mistakes.  As a matter of fact, I would venture to say that not a single one of us has the right to judge anyone else for their sins.  I believe that we don't have to love the sin, but we do need to love the sinner.  After all, we can't help them turn back to a loving Heavenly Father if we don't teach them that they are lovable and have worth in His eyes.  

I live in a small town.  It can be a hard place.  Every once in a while, something will happen and the entire town can't seem to gossip enough about it.  It breaks my heart to hear the judging and the condemning that goes on.  Especially when the mistake is one by a teen or a child.

It can be very hard to live down a sin.  In a larger town, you can escape the gossip sometimes.  In our small one, if follows you every where.  Do you remember the song "Mary had a little lamb"?  Sometimes I wonder if that lamb was her sin.  "It followed her to school one day.  It made the children laugh and play to see a lamb at school".  That is so much like sin.  Others laugh and make fun over a situation that they only think they know about.  They point fingers and ridicule and tease.  All in the name of fun, of course.

My point is simply that we never know when the words we speak will hurt another.  We can take a pretty good guess though that if we are busy pointing out their weaknesses, they are probably not done in a Christ like spirit.  Sin does not last forever.  It only lasts as long as we continue to give it power over us.

Let us all take a moment today to be just a little kinder to those that we might believe don't deserve our kindness.  Someone whom our hearts tells us Christ loves, but our minds keep telling us differently.  Maybe someone a little like me.  A sinner, but someone who is trying the best she knows how to be closer to Him.