Mercy is your specialty. That’s what you love most. And compassion is on its way to us. You’ll stamp out our wrongdoing. You’ll sink our sins to the bottom of the ocean. Micah 7:19 (MSG)
I recently watched ‘Jumanji' again… it's a childhood favourite (God bless Robin Williams…). In the opening scenes, two children are burying a boxed wooden game that you can only guess wrought havoc on their lives. In time, a boy named Alan Parish finds the game, engages it, and it turns his life upside down.
Life has a habit of doing that… Especially when we engage sin. It can play out in ways we could never have imagined. Have you ever said, “I never thought I would end up like this…” in a negative sense?
I have. Sometimes I can trace it back to a decision I made, or a decision someone else made, but either way I’ve been in desperate situations that seem helpless and I wish I could go back in time, wipe the slate clean and start again… Back to that place of innocence and vulnerability – before the ‘game of life’ stepped it up a notch and started throwing lemons at me…
(A little dramatic, thanks for indulging me… haha)
That's where Jesus comes in. Mercy is His speciality… Compassion is His MO. He doesn’t enter into your life like a ‘Health & Safety Food Inspector’… clipboard in hand, glasses in place, inspecting and recording, looking for flaws…
He enters our lives with mercy and compassion in hand, His eyes seeing our value regardless of the situation, and His heart pulsating love for us and all humanity out and into the atmosphere around us. He takes our sins and hurts, our wrong doings and misguided assumptions, and stamps them out as if they never existed.
At the end of Jumanji, Alan Parish and his friends tie chains to this evil board game, and they cast it into the river where it gets carried away with the tide. However, the closing scene shows the game landing on distant shores at the feet of unsuspecting children.
Unlike the end of Jumanji, when Jesus sinks your sins to the bottom of the ocean, that is where they stay. They no longer have an eternal grip on your life. Whatever mark they have left on you, Jesus is well equipped and able to help you overcome and heal from it.
Love you guys, have the best day.
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