by Rev Douglas Brauner

Life is more than zeros and ones.

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.
Romans 3:22b-25a English Standard Version

We live in a digital, binary world. It’s either on, or off…a zero, or a one. As a result we expect perfection. We want our music to be crisp, our movies to be visually flawless, and our photographs to show every detail. We don’t like messy.

This picture was taken with a Polaroid OneStep 2 on I-Type Film.

However, this picture is messy. I took it with a new camera, but in an old format. I shot it with a Polaroid OneStep 2 camera on new I-Type film. I get it. That means nothing to you, but the picture looks quite familiar to many of us. It’s what we grew up with. It’s similar to pictures that fill photo albums from years gone by. It’s anything but crisp, flawless, and detailed…and I love it.

Christ did not step down into a digital world, but an analog world. It is a world that’s been messy ever since Adam and Eve decided to eat of the forbidden fruit. Sin has made the world messy.

Christians fight with each other.

Christians divorce each other.

Christians struggle with addictions.

I’m specifically picking on us Christians because, even though we know the mercy of God in Christ, we still live in a messy, sin-filled, world. As Paul reminds us, “all have fallen short,” including those who follow Christ.

It’s into this fallen world that Christ entered.

It’s for this fallen world that Christ died. He died because our lives are messy. He has forgiven us by doing what we could not do: keep God’s law perfectly, and he nailed our sins to his cross. Through his mercy, and with the power of his Spirit, we are empowered to live differently, and to follow in Christ’s footsteps in this analog world.

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado