Guilty
When I was a kid I would often climb all over the counters and cabinets. I was short so I would hold one of the handles on the upper cabinets and pivot my left foot sideways. Then while holding on, trying not to cause the cabinet door to swing open and make me fall or hit me in the temple, I would bend my right leg and throw my knee up onto the kitchen counter. I don’t know how I never pulled the cabinet doors right off the hinges.
Once the first act of what my mother called “monkey business” was over, act two would commence. Anchoring my right hand next to my right knee, I then would thrust myself up onto the counter while my left leg was loosed out into space, my mind trying to remember to get it up to the counter next to my right leg. Now, with two knees up on the counter top, I’d lean back using the center of gravity to pull the cabinet doors open on my right and left. While my body was angled like a rock climber I carefully scanned the contents of the cabinets. If I had ropes I would have repelled down. What a rush from having to jump.
Why did I do all this? To get a snack. Yes, just a snack. I got pretty good at getting up there too. The first few times I would fall and my mom had to tell me to stay off the counters and I never really learned. At one point I could get up on the counters in a matter of 8 seconds.
One day, to my mother’s surprise, I had gotten up there and gotten an entire bag of chocolate chips in the time it took her to check the laundry. How did she know? Well, half of the chocolate chips were all over my face. So when she asked me, “Did you climb up there and get into the chocolate chips?” it really wasn’t much of a question. She was giving me opportunity to say that I did and acknowledge that I disobeyed. I had no idea I was a chocolate mess so I tried to hide it and emphatically say, “Noooooo.” When my mom heard my answer she looked disappointed, cocked her head to the right, turned me around and directed my body by driving my shoulders into the bathroom. When she turned the light on I saw my reflection in the mirror and I knew I was done for. Chocolate on my lips, on my cheek and a little bit up by my ear. What can I say, I’m an… excited eater.
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At my church we do communion every week by intiction. (Intiction is when you get a piece of the bread and dip it in the cup.) I have been going to this church for two months now, since I moved to St Louis, and every week I rip a piece of bread out of the loaf and dip in into the wine. And every week I inevitably get wine to drip down my arm because the bread didn’t absorb it in the amount of time I had it in the cup.
Tonight while I was standing in line, waiting for my turn to rip the bread and dip my piece in the wine I thought, “How appropriate.” I mean, I am as guilty as guilty can be. There is no use hiding it. And as the wine dripped down my finger and down my arm and then onto my jeans I think it was a good reminder that I am the cause for Christ’s death- his blood is all over me. Instead of being found with chocolate from ear to ear I am found in a garden with fruit in my hands. I am found next to the cross holding the nails while His blood is all over my body. There is no getting away from it; there is no use trying to hide my sin. In knowing this I can see that the grace that covers me is even bigger.
From now on I’m not hiding it. I’m grabbing a big piece of bread and letting the wine drip down my arm as it may.
