I said that I thought unity might be the hardest thing we are asked to do. I changed my mind. Today's Psalm, Psalm 51, is a confession.
It doesn't contain qualifiers...I'm a sinner, but not really, because I do my best and that's really all you can ask of me. I'm a sinner and dealing with the consequences of sin...but if you were really a loving God, you would make my life good despite my sin. A broken spirit is not really a healthy way of being in the world...God, you would expect something else...something more positive.
Confessing our sin. Maybe that's the hardest thing. We are taught to point fingers in blame, to look toward the other when things go wrong. We judge others shortcomings and excuse our own. Or we just don't go there. We assume that our "sin" is not that bad and can't have truly significant consequences.
Can we be humble if we cannot recognize and admit our own sin? Can we identify the sin that we simply cannot escape...therefore being "born into sin from our mother's wombs?"
I wonder what might happen if the majority of us took our own sin more seriously than the sins of others, spent time confession that sin, and then trusted that God was at work cleansing us. What might happen if we were actually vulnerable enough to God and each other to show broken and contrite hearts?
There's a path to follow. There won't be much traffic.
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