Lent day 43

 This week our church is running an Easter scheme for 60 local kids. Over three days they will spend time playing games, dancing, making things, trying to win points for their team, eating snacks and hearing the good news that God has a rescue plan.  https://www.facebook.com/100012341134938/videos/pcb.1811433892611298/870196761540845

Yesterday our wonderful youth worker Phoebe was explaining to the kids that we and our world need to be rescued and that Jesus is our rescuer.  Despite the fact that she was explaining the gospel in very simple terms to young children, she said something that really struck 57 year old me in a new way.  Explaining Adam and Eve's fall she said ' they didnt only break the rules, but actually they broke God's heart'

I realised that more often than not I think about sin as being a breaking of rules, transgression of laws, wrongdoing rather than heart-breaking.  When I hear the word 'sin', I think about myself doing something which deserves punishment rather than God's heart suffering due to my self-righteousness.  And if I stop to think that each and every act of selfish disobedience carried out by every person who has ever lived has inflicted pain on God's heart...... 

At Easter we consider the physical and psychological pain endured by Jesus as He was betrayed, reviled, scourged and nailed to a piece of wood. We contemplate the abandonment by His Father and the three days in the tomb.  But today I am remembering again that Jesus did this not only because He loved us, but because of His overwhelming love for His Father.  This was the only way to stop the pain that God's heart had been suffering ever since Adam and Eve fell.  Jesus's blood covers our sins and God remembers them no more.   When Jesus says ' It is finished'  maybe He is not only talking about the work to atone for our sins, but perhaps too He is telling His Father that the pain of watching His creation failing and falling is over.  Now sins can be forgiven and covered.  

If I loved God as He deserves to be loved I would be heartbroken by my own sin and the sin of others. I remember a few years ago one of my sons coming to me to 'confess' something he had done of which he was ashamed.  He told me what it was and burst into floods of tears.  I was really surprised at the outpouring of grief over something which was really pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things.  But he was heartbroken and when I asked why he said it was because he knew he had disappointed God.  I was very humbled.  I know I dont feel like that when I stumble and sin.  Im just glad I can ask for forgiveness and be forgiven. 

Every day is a school day in the kingdom of God and we are never too old and wise to learn alongside the children.  Im looking forward to learning something new today.