Last week, in The Crowbarred Car Door, Part 1, I relayed the story of how a petty thief had taken a crowbar to our car door to steal 3 dollars in the coin cubby of the car’s dash. Just to recap a couple of the details, my son, who was the driver of the car at the time, found the damage and went back into the hardware store for touch-up paint because he was afraid we would be angry with him for the damage done to the car. However, in the end, once he got home, he immediately showed me the damage and “confessed”.
The first lesson we learned from this story was that we don’t need to do risky things to fill the unfilled longings of our hearts. All we need is Jesus! He fills us up! Secondly we learned that just like the touch-up paint did little to hide the crowbar scars on the car door, our own efforts to “cover up” our sin, to “cancel out” our sin, have no effect. The only hope is the blood of Jesus.
There is just one more lesson to be learned from this incident. For some reason, my son felt that the incident was somehow his fault. He felt “guilty”. The only real fault against him would have been purely circumstantial: If he hadn’t gone to the hardware store, it wouldn’t have happened. Nonetheless, he was afraid of our reaction.
It makes me wonder how often we must have overreacted in the past to make him afraid to tell us about this, and I pray that God will help me to stop overreacting in the future. But I believe the real lesson goes a bit deeper. You see, even if my son had chosen to not tell us about what had happened to the car, we would have found out eventually, say, for example, the next time we went to use the car and found that the door would barely close!
Isn’t it the same with sin? We commit sin, then we try to “cover it up”, hide it, make it so that no one ever knows. But just like that crowbar scar on the car door was impossible to hide, God sees everything we do. We can perhaps hide our weaknesses from humanity, but we can never hide them from God. Far better to do what my son did and “fess up” immediately. I would have been pretty frustrated if he hadn’t told me and I had simply found it on my own. As it was, I immediately forgave my son and helped him to understand that I didn’t hold him in any way at fault for what happened. If he had hidden it from me, however, I would have been very angry. Not for his “crime”, which really wasn’t a crime, but for the fact that he had tried to hide it.
Friends, let’s stop trying to hide our sins. Let’s follow my son’s example and “fess up” immediately. First and foremost, let’s confess to God; and then, let’s not hesitate to confess to whoever it is we’ve hurt.
Who would have known that that crowbarred car door could teach us so many lessons. But let’s remember these three important lessons:
1. Let’s remember that true joy and happiness comes from the Lord;
2. Let’s remember that only the blood of Jesus can truly cover up our sin; and
3. Let’s remember to confess our wrongdoings to our God and Father, and to our fellow man.
Oh, my neighbour fixed the car door for $300, a fraction of the cost we would have paid at an auto body shop. God is so good. Nonetheless, as we shelled out the money to pay him, we couldn’t help but think, It would have cost us only 100th that much to have just given the thief the 3$ in the cubby!
In His love,
Lyn
Lyn Chaffart, Speech-Language Pathologist, mother of two, Author — “Aboard God’s Train — A Journey With God Through the Valley of Cancer”, Author and Moderator for The Nugget, a tri-weekly internet newsletter, and Scriptural Nuggets, a website devoted to Christian devotionals and inspirational poems, with Answers2Prayer Ministries. Follow Lyn on Twitter @lynchaffart.
(To access the entire “The Crowbarred Car Door” mini-series, please click here.)