Somnolently

My daughter has a tendency to pick her lip. When we watch DVDs together, the hand goes up, somnolently, to play with her lip. It distracts me, and I ask her to stop. She does, and two seconds later, the hand goes up again. I flick it away. Two seconds later it is back.

I am no different. I find attitudes within myself which are displeasing to God, self-focused. I worry and fret in ways which are incompatible with trusting a God who loves me and has wonderful things for me. I obsess about the opinion of others, and have imaginary conversations with them in my head, either exonerating myself (or endless trying to) or saying things to them which they would approve of and basking in the imagined approval. (Sounds silly, I know, but my head is sometimes a weird echo chamber where the echoes get louder.) Then I realize what I’m doing – setting up an idol and forsaking God’s perfect acceptance of me. I repent. And somnolently, it happens again. Nobody sees it. Heck, everyone who talks to me might be thinking about how spiritual I am. (Well, probably not.) But I know better.

I’ve seen other Christians at this juncture, and the choice is pretty simple. When confronted with how deeply, persistently, “somnolently” sinful we are – you have to throw yourself on Jesus and discover profounder depths of his love for persistently, recalcitrantly sinful children. But if you can’t imagine a Savior who would love you that much, who would still want you around as one of his children, the only other choice is to ignore it. And the sense of wrongness will start to come out on others, and the Pharisee in you gets stronger.

But Jesus Christ really does love recalcitrantly obtuse children. He really loves us. And that continual repentance – having to repent so often, so often, over the deeply ingrained grooves in your soul – it destroys whatever high opinion we might have of ourselves. And we’re brought face-to-face before the staggering, disproportionate, crazy love of God. (And slowly, those grooves start to straighten, making straight paths in the desert for the revelation of God’s glory . . .)