You would have enjoyed it as much as I did. This morning at 11:30 a young man came into my room for class to begin. He took his usual chair and looked around. Something was wrong. His usual cronies didn’t surround him. It was a new batch. I started to laugh and he looked very puzzled until the light came on. I had marked him absent from the class that had started at 10:30. He was an hour late and now in the wrong class.
Ah the joys of being human. I wonder how many times a day God laughs at us as we bumble our way through life. I notice the older I get the more bumbling takes place. Now that’s scary. I used to have a Bible teacher in high school that told us God held us accountable for all our mistakes whether they were intentional or not. Now that I am much older I don’t think so. I would argue with the old stick in the mud. I wish I could have followed him around for a day making a list of his failures. While sins are mistakes, all mistakes are not sins. Surely when Jesus was learning to be a carpenter he cut a few boards too short. To err is human and Jesus was very human.
We must never allow religion to tyrannize us into being so fearful we are not perfect and thus lost. That kind of thinking steals away the joy of living. Instead let’s learn to laugh at ourselves and chalk mistakes up to experience. And the longer we live the more experience we log.
Written by Roger Bothwell on September 13, 2008
Spring of Life, 901 Signorelli Circle, St. Helena, CA 94574