The Weight of Sin

Most of the time we are very comfortable with our sin.

Sin becomes something that we come accept as do the weight of clothing on our bodies, a thing that we wear every day and so it no longer becomes something remarkable.  Certainly there are times when it may wear a little uncomfortably, as with a shirt that has something which is scratching us, but we either cut out the offending item or just adjust it to a different location.  In fact, we become so comfortable with it that sometimes we even seem to forget that it exists.

Oh we know that it does.  Sometimes we do something or see something and realize "Hey, this is a sin" - but most of the time we find a way to shift it around until it no longer bothers us or merely accept it as part of our human condition, say a short prayer for forgiveness, and carry on.

But occasionally we are brought face to face with it.

This usually happens when there are consequences to an event which we had not anticipated or not foreseen - the real outcome of the actions of course, but something which we never believed would happen.  Suddenly the rawness and evil of sin is revealed to us in all of its horrible glory. 

The worst part, of course, is that sin cannot be undone.  The actions are complete, the outcomes now transparent to ourselves and anyone in the know.  The thing we believed was a light weight to be flicked off suddenly becomes the stone we cannot move; the thing that we thought "everyone will understand" is demonstrated to be excuses of our own making for our weakness or inability to face reality.

It is then we realize that what we believed to be light or of little importance was only so because we thought it so in our minds.

Is there a remedy for this?  Forgiveness exists, of course, but forgiveness does not eliminate the outcome of the actions that we have taken. Unlike clothing, merely removing it will not undo the consequences of it.  We can work to make things better - fill the gaps of our lives, seek to reveal and strengthen the weaknesses we have found, ask for even more grace - but perhaps the greatest thing we can do is simply this: recall the feeling that we had the moment that the sin went from something we thought was weightless to something that found had the weight of a thousand suns, and resolve to never go there again.