Grateful
As Forrest Gump’s Momma once said, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
I make my friends laugh often at my acts of stupidity.
I make my teenage kids laugh at the stupid things I say. Dad jokes, puns, pretending to understand whatever the latest trend is and act like I’m in the middle of it.
I’m confident if I delivered one of my wry, so-stupid-it’s-physically-painful jokes in biblical times I’d cop a stoning.
I am fortunate enough to know my friends and family love me–especially when, on my part, it’s largely an act.
I seek to lower my status and elevate theirs to help them feel special. If I get a laugh in the process, even better. Being stupid allows me to cut into some pretty tense situations, offering hope and love after whatever it is I’ve done has diffused the moment somewhat.
That kind of stupidity is not what the above image is talking about (although, a lot of my stupidity would count).
We know that it is our sin that separates us from the goodness and will of God. We know the effects of that separation and the grief it causes us, and we can only guess at the grief it causes our Creator. We know that God loved us so much that he sent his only son Jesus Christ to die on the cross and be resurrected to be the final sacrifice that allows us forgiveness, direct access to God, and restoration.
We sin knowingly. We sin without second thought. Sometimes we learn through the consequences of our actions that what we’ve done is sinned. Stupidity is no excuse.
Our willing insensitivity, or poor joke, or sarcasm, or mistimed light-heartedness…these things should draw the wrath of God on us because we know they’re stupid and, at their simplest, they hurt other people.
People we should be valuing because God values them.
People we should be caring for because God cares for them.
People we should be loving because God loves them, just as much as God loves us.
We deserve to be pilloried, admonished, even punished for the times we mess up like this. Be it our thoughts or our actions, we deserve the full punishment allotted to us. To be dragged outside the city walls and have those who are accusing me of the things I am rightly guilty of pound my body with rocks until I am dead.
I’m just grateful that the only one qualified to throw a stone at me…didn’t.
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Molk is the Senior Field Officer (North), and Young Adult ministry leader as a part of the PULSE team.
