The Writing on The Wall

As I walked into the guest room of my Mother-in-love's house, I saw it. There on the wall was not just a small mark that might possibly stand a chance to be erased with Mr. Clean's magic eraser, but a huge, multicolored swirl of art that only a 3 year old that had gotten too quiet and not been checked on could create. My heart ached as it skipped a beat. I called to my daughter in the other room. "Mary Lyndsey, could you come here please?" I heard little footsteps running down the hall towards me. "Yes mommy," she said in the sweetest voice imaginable as she came in to the room. "Did you do this?" I asked. I knew full well she had, but I wanted to see if she would make a bad situation worse by lying about it. She dropped her head. "Yes mommy," she said, "but I didn't mean to. I was playing and I wanted to draw but I couldn't find any paper."

It was at this moment that my Mother-in-love entered the room. "Don't fuss at her," she said. "We've already dealt with it, besides it will come off." "It will not come off," I retorted. "It's permanent marker!" "Then we will cover it with paint" she said.

"When did this happen anyway?" I asked. "Oh a few days ago," she replied. "We weren't going to tell you about it because she had already asked me for forgiveness so we weren't going to bring it back up again." I wasn't quite sure how to respond to her. "Did you punish her?" I asked. I wanted to be sure she had learned a lesson.

My daughter had gotten carried away in her playing and because she didn't want to stop what she was doing to look for paper, she had ended up doing something wrong. As I considered this, I wondered how many times I had gotten carried away in what I was doing and didn't stop so I ended up doing something wrong too?

Sometimes we feel like our sin is in permanent marker - it won't come off. But Jesus says that He washes us white as snow and covers our sin with His blood kind of like the paint could cover the wall. We would never know that the permanent marker had been there once it's covered with paint. And Jesus doesn't remember our sin - it's like it was never there once it's covered with His blood.

Do we sometimes try to bring our past mistakes back up over and over again? God says that if you have asked for forgivness, that it's been dealt with and there is no need to bring it up again.

The good thing about this situation was that when confronted with her sin, my daughter told the truth. She admitted she had done wrong and had already asked her GrandJudy for forgiveness. Do we face the truth and admit our wrong, or make matters worse by trying to cover our sin up? It doesn't work when we try to cover it ourselves - only the blood of Christ can cover it.