Genesis 3 makes it abundantly clear that sin—disobedience, literally, “missing the mark”—comes with a hefty price. Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit and get booted from Paradise faster than a meat-eater at a PETA convention, thereby ruining the chance of everyone getting to walk around naked and unashamed…dang it. Three chapters later the world makes God sad because they won’t stop killing each other (no modern equivalent to this). So God hits the refresh button and wipes out all but a dozen people and a floating zoo full of animals in the mother of all rainstorms: 40 days and nights of rain, which is like living in Seattle (but without the flannel shirts and Nirvana cover bands). Skip way ahead, a long, long, long time to Exodus. The Israelites are put into 400 years of bondage for no other reason than they are really good at the whole “be fruitful and multiply” thing (you know, sex). Too numerous. Might rise up and overthrow Pharaoh. Solution: slavery. Enter Moses. Leads them out of the slavery after pimp-slapping Egypt for Pharaoh’s hard-heartedness…and for his being kind of a douchebag. Later, Moses strikes a rock in the desert with his staff (inadvertently inventing the game of stickball), water flows and Moses gets locked out of the Promise Land because he made God mad.
Our consequences today wear a different face, but the weight is still more than we were meant to bear. As I’ve become slightly more aged and vaguely wiser I’ve noticed with much trepidation the effect my sins have had and continue to have on other people. We think our sin affects only us, but we don’t live in a vacuum. We live in relationship and community. Scripture says that the effects of sin are felt to the 3rd and 4th generation. The life of King David is telling of this truth. And I can tell you that watching your sins affect those around you, frankly, sucks. The only way I can describe it is “heart-sadness.” It’s the kind of sadness that affects your body. Your whole body seems stuck in a state of melancholy. Couple that with an ever-increasing awareness of one’s own shortcomings and you begin to feel like you are buried under a heaping pile of rubble.
But…
There in that rubble with you is Jesus, who understands burdens and the weight of sin, who can lead you out into freedom, life and better days full of hope and a desire for His Way. The road isn’t easy and the gate is exceedingly narrow (and few find it). You want to give up or, worse, live halfway between both realities. But deep down you know you can’t. so with the Spirit working in you, the difficult, arduous task of digging out, rebuilding and repairing begins.
And each day the weight becomes a little less.
shalom, matt
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