by Pastor Douglas Brauner

Christ Deals with Our Junk

This picture confronts me with how I approach life. The things with which I do not want to deal, I put in a place where I don’t have to see them, that is, until I enter the space where I have stored them. I feel overwhelmed when I revisit those spaces. Some people might call those spaces a museum of my past, but I see them as a failure to deal with my stuff. It’s more than stuff. It is stuff with history.

I do the same thing with my moral failures; my inability to love God with everything I am and my helplessness to love my neighbor as myself. I pack them away somewhere in my subconscious only to run into them when something triggers a memory. And once again, I’m overwhelmed by my failure.

Does that sound familiar?

“As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. As far as the rising sun is from its setting, so far has he removed our sins from us.”
Psalm 103:11-12

Do I believe that God’s steadfast, loyal love for me is higher than the stars in the universe? Do I believe that God has removed my moral failures from me as far as the place where the sun rises is from the place where it sets?

The psalmist reflects the power of cross. It is in Jesus that I know the steadfast, loyal love of God. It is in Jesus that I experience freedom as God removes my sin from me as far as the east is from the west.

When I hold on to my stuff and attempt to put it out of sight, I’m acting as if the cross does not have the power to forgive, that it doesn’t have the power to break my chains to sin, death, and the power of hell.

I pray that today God would give you the eyes of faith to see that the junk of your life is in God’s landfill never to be resurrected again. You are free!

Copyright Family of Christ Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado