Walking the path

(2-minute read)

When I was very young, my spiritual life was primarily guilt. After God created the earth, he established commandments for man to follow. I thought to keep things in order, anyone who disobeyed these laws was punished. It wasn’t personal; it was universal, and we were all in the same boat.

Religion mainly was spiritual men quoting even more spiritual men from previous ages. All these men were supposedly far more spiritual than ordinary people who were trapped in our sins so profoundly we couldn’t keep up with all the confessing and asking for forgiveness. Making things even worse, I knew I was hopelessly on the lower level of ordinary people.

I was shocked in my first encounter with the Lord that he knew who I was and loved me. It took me a while to discover that he also loved everyone else. Love is always personal. God was nothing like I initially thought.

I didn’t really understand commandments until I became a parent. My daughter, Debi, usually played in our fenced backyard but occasionally would play in the front of the house with neighboring kids. Ours was not a through street, and there was very little traffic, but I still worried about her playing ball with the other kids in the front yard. We needed a new commandment which might go like this:

Thou shall not run after the ball into the street before stopping at the curb, looking to the left and right, and ensuring that no car is moving.

One day, Debi was playing with friends in the front yard, and I saw the ball bouncing toward the street. I panicked and jerked around to see if any cars were coming. The road was clear. I looked back over at Debi; she had stopped at the curb, looked both ways and then went after the ball. SHE DID IT! She had learned to do it properly. I wanted to celebrate. All the times previous when she hadn’t stopped and looked were now irrelevant. She had learned.

Although the devil would be willing for me to celebrate her victory, even now, he, the great sin counter, would want Debi to be punished for all the prior events when she had failed. The devil is a master at logic and reasoning. Even before the garden of Eden, he was an expert in the knowledge of good and evil. But what he doesn’t understand is love. The commandment was not given to condemn or punish her but to protect her from the usual consequences of an action. God so loved us that he sent his son that through his work we could live our lives learning and developing to be able to walk with the Lord.

Photo by Tom Swinnen