I had intended to use my week off last week to get ‘plenty done’. As well as having the week off work I had an operation on the 17th so had little to do but recover. My idea was to use the week constructively and do lots of reading and writing... I failed to account for the side effects of the anaesthetic and 5 practically sleepless nights. You should then be thankful that I didn’t try and post anything; it’d have read something like “Hurdy gurdy pillows... thirsty throat jam, two on Tuesdays... I like those, but anyway where’s my slippers?” My Mum came to look after me, which was no great job, though it was hardly a break from helping to look after my nieces and nephew who are all under 5. She stopped short of putting reigns on me in public.
So anyway – here is a summarised version of the 2nd kid’s talk I did.
Justification
First off a reading from one of the children - Romans 5:1 - 2
"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God."Following a recap on last week’s repentance talk I explained briefly what is meant by justification, using examples that I’ve heard the Pastor use in the past. He has used the example before of clothing, us in our filthy rags seeking to see the King, the King won’t see us as we are. So Jesus covers us up in his spotless clean robe. That way the King will find us acceptable.
I then used an altered version of a story from a book I used to read as a boy. My parents had bought a short series of books about a little boy called Gus who gets in all sorts of situations which translate to the Christian experience. I couldn’t remember the story completely so I used poetic licence in filling in the gaps to make it fit. (Excuse the bullet pointing but it makes it easier than paragraph after paragraph of my attempted story telling).
Gus’ story
• Gus and his parents are going to a party. Dad dresses him in a bright, new clean shirt. While they’re waiting to leave Gus asks to go out to play – Dad warns him “Be careful, don’t do anything to get dirty!!!”
• Gus is careful, he sees the tree swing. Decides no I could fall and get dirty. He sees his friends playing football, but stays away even when they call him trying to persuade him to join in. He keeps trying to avoid anything that might get him dirty. This is because he knows his Dad will be really upset if he gets dirty.
• Then he sees some big fat juicy blackberries and thinks ‘No harm in having just one’. So he has one and it tastes so, so good... then he has another, then another. When he is finished gorging on these berries he looks down and sees a big dirty sticky blackberry stain on his chest!
• Gus feels panic, worry, he feels sick. He doesn’t want to go home to Dad now - Dad’ll see the stain and be so disappointed, even angry! Gus was told to very specifically to stay clean and he didn’t.
• Slowly he walks home, thinking up excuses – other people did it, they threw things at him, he slipped... he tries to think of reasons why it wasn’t his fault. If he can blame someone else then Dad won’t blame him and everything is ok. He even tries to cover it hoping Dad won’t see, holding his hand over the stain.
• Gus eventually gets home and thinks ‘Dad’ll know if I lie’.
• So he tells Dad what happened – tempted by one berry, then another and he forgot about his shirt and he got all mucky. “I’m so sorry Dad I didn’t do what you said!”
• Gus sits waiting for Dad to get angry, but instead Dad says “Thank you for being honest, thank you for telling me, you’re my son and I love you, so don’t worry! I forgive you.”
• Then Dad produces a brand new shirt – crisp and clean, fresh out of the wrapper. Gus puts it on and it is flawlessly clean, no stains, no marks, no dirt at all.
• They head off to the party –Gus went to Dad told the truth and said sorry (repented). Dad forgave Gus, Gus has new clean clothes from Dad, and the dirty old shirt covered in the filth of sin is discarded or covered (justified).
So there is justification. I did the 3rd talk on temptation but was a little dis-satisfied with it and it wasn’t sound enough to be repeated so I’ll miss that out and my next post will be the 4th – ‘The Golden Thread’.
