In Psalm 130, the psalmist is so right – who could stand if God kept a record of our sins?  Imagine if each of our sins was written on an index card!  How high the stack would be.  But what if we pulled out all the sins that were just against God?  Would the stack be appreciably smaller?  I don’t think so.

As I think on my sins, most involve another person.  That’s why I think my stack would still be pretty high.  I’d guess most of us seek forgiveness from God for our sin on a regular basis – daily if not more often!  But what about the sin that involve and affect other people?  Certainly for the blatant and most egregious we seek forgiveness from the injured parties.  But what of the ‘lesser’ sins – the unkind thoughts and the unholy looks?  They are another matter!  For me, these sins would represent most of my stack of index cards.  And you?

Yet in the end these sins are also between us and God.  They are the ones I am ashamed of.  I can come to God with my big sins because they are so obvious and so in need of redeeming.  But these little ones are harder to name and to lay bare before God.  Is this because they are the sins I so struggle to fully set aside?  But each day we can lay these sins before Him and they are cast aside and forever forgotten.  As we feel the freedom of redemption, we also must seek to repent and to be at work against these sins in our lives, to sin less often.  This day and each day, may we grow more into Christ so that our stack grows more slowly!!