I had something happen to my 6 year-old son last week that just killed me. I think it taught me a lot about how the Lord sees us. My wife and son were at Target (Some of you out there may think that that was their first mistake) and were looking around. They were in the front and she was looking at a magazine while he looked at the playing cards for Yi-Gi-Oh and Magic The Gathering and Pokémon. She told him that we could not buy any today but he could look. They started to walk out and she realized he was hiding something in his pocket. He had attempted to shoplift some Pokémon cards without paying. Obviously she went ballistic. Then when I got home from studying that day, she told me what happened. At first, I was flabbergasted. I could not believe it. We prayed for guidance. Then I went ballistic.

I screamed at him and I spanked him. Then I thought about it and I spanked him again. He was crying and I told him, “This hurts me more than it hurts you!!!!” and I meant it. I could not believe how much it hurt me. I thought I had taught him better. I had bought him cards so many times before, why did he have to take them and then try to hide it?

The main reason for my emotional outburst was fear. I was afraid that I was not being a good parent and that was why he did it. But most of all I was afraid for him and that he was going to grow up and be one of those people in the world who cannot control themselves and end up on drugs, or in jail or just unable to cope in society. I was afraid that he would become one of those people you see on TV who misses their Ritalin and due to their inability to control themselves, resorts to shooting up their high school or living on the streets or someone who someone who  overdoses on drugs at a Hollywood party or  (Lord have mercy) someone that Mark Dice was going to interview on the street and he would appear to be an idiot.

After calming down a little I was still afraid. I was afraid of whether or not I did enough of maybe I did too much. But I received a gift of a thought and a memory that I hope balanced it out. When I was much younger I was a camp counselor and I had a kid in my cabin named Shorty. He was a troublemaker and he hit other kids. But I once told him, “Shorty, you can be a good kid”. His reply was “No, I can’t. I am a bad kid.” But I repeated to him, “No, you can be a good kid”. He did not believe me!  Maybe all he ever heard was that he was bad. I wanted my son to know that despite his (potentially criminal) mistake, I believed in him. I wanted him to know that I believed that he knew what he had done was wrong. I wanted him to believe that he was loved and I was behind him pushing him, and that he was not alone in doing the right thing. I wanted him to believe that there is good in him.

I hate to think that when we sin, the Lord feels the same or worse than I felt about my son. I know I have done bad things and how many times does He have to say, ‘ I know your needs better than you do and you can depend on me!’ Yet we go out and do the opposite of what we know He wants us to do. I realize that taken to another extreme one can mention the story of the man in flood waiting for the Lord to save him while the Lord sends boats and helicopters and such. The story is fully given here. It can get confusing. Thank God for the blood of the Lamb covering my sins! I just don’t want the Lord to be so disappointed and hurt regarding me and the things I have done so I try not to do them, but I am only human.

I want to believe that as we are pushing ourselves along to do the right thing, the Lord is also pulling us. We are not alone in this. If we were then it would truly just be religion, a set of practices and procedures to get us to Heaven, no better than believing in Odin and Thor. But the truth is it is more of a relationship, a give and take. And the Bible supports this. One important person in my life once said to me that all the people in the Bible failed God (I guess except Jesus) but the difference between them and those who have rejected God for their lives is that they never stopped. They believed that the Lord believes in them! Examples of this can be seen in Peter, David, and many others. They did not stop responding to the call of the Lord, to the Lord’s attempts to reach out to them, who is always reaching out to everyone and trying to bring into relationship with Him. He has done this with the Jews, he has done it with Christians and He continues to call all of us. Truly that is a sign He believes in us despite our failings.

1 John 3:1-3 “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! . . . Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure”.

—————————————————-W.