Sunday, March 22, 2015

Grace, Grace, Marvelous Grace!

Psalm 51---sin and Grace:

Rev. Lois Muller preached this morning on Sin and Grace...We don't often hear "sin" spoken of in our church. It is missing the mark of perfection- a sensing of the need to be restored- cleansed and scrubbed clean from the vileness that separates us from the peaceful and ideal acceptance of a loving God.  We wear masks to hide from others, God, and ourselves and depending upon our faith journey, the path to grace can be self flaglatilon, denial of behavior that hurts another, God or ourself. We can  claim we have no acceptance of sin, (which of us would rather say we didn't believe in Sin) than to acknowledge the need to be purged from it?

I acknowledge my brokenness; my shame, my neediness, my need for an experience of not just knowing God loves me, but feeling that love that transforms me all the way down to my toes! I want more than a God who says, Go and sin no more...I want a God who wraps arms around me and whispers, I was there all the time!  I saw your darkness, your sadness, your shame, your anger, and yes, your tears. I saw it all, and nothing you could ever do, or have ever done, can separate you from my love and Grace.  

I long to hold you through the night, to restore the years of aloneness that plague the isolated recesses of your memory...I long to hold you redemptively, even in those times that you repeated the same sins, time after time because you felt no one really cared.  Will you let me in? Will you let my Spirit cleanse and restore?

Will you know Grace?

Oh this is not the sermon Lois preached, but this is the sermon I heard.

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