Pardon My Wrinkles

Annnnnnd the book winner for May is KAREN, notified at her blog and here.

Leave a comment or send an email to [writecat at consolidated dot net] and I’ll enter you name into the June drawing for either The Stained Glass Pickup ~ Glimpses of God’s Uncommon Wisdom or A Scrapbook of Christmas Firsts ~ Stories to Warm Your Heart and Tips to Simplify Your Holiday

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“Discipleship Journal” reported that the “Oxford Junior Dictionary” cut a few words out of the current edition, to reflect Britain’s “modern, multicultural, and multi-faith society.” They cut religious and historical words such as: sin, Bishop, empire, and nun. Some of the modern words that replaced them were: blog, broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, and celebrity.

“Sin is out, celebrity is in,” DJ magazine’s lead words touted. That concept reflects the mindset of some of the world. Much of what God deems sinful is celebrated in society. Sin wrinkles lives, lives that can be pardoned only by the perfect Jesus Christ.

I ordered new sheers for my guest bedroom double windows, and when I opened the package out slid the long, filmy panels. They were remarkably smooth, with the only creases being along the folds due to packaging.

A slip of paper floated to the floor as I looped the sheers over my arms, readying to thread them onto the curtain rods. I thought the manufacturer’s note might contain washing instructions. Written in bold print across the top of the paper was “PARDON MY WRINKLES.”

I’ve been thinking about those words since then and about all the wrinkles folk get as they pass through life, wrinkles caused by poor judgments and giving into selfish desires. Those happenings make dents, folds, and impressions on a person. All of us sin, and none of us are without resulting wrinkles.

I think about the folk Jesus’ holy character attracted. Like us, they had a variety of sin-issues, past and present. In Jesus’ immediate group of disciples was tax collector, Matthew, who had cheated citizens, and Judas, known to steal from the love offerings.

Others were drawn to the purity and joy seen in Jesus, and sought to have the creases smoothed out, to be done with sin. Immoral women and men sought Jesus’ forgiveness and received a permanent pressing — forever relief from wrongs done and help to avoid future wrongs.

People near Jesus also had subtle sins, too. James and John were called Sons of Thunder because of quick tempers. Martha put protocol before people. Thomas struggled with doubt. Peter wanted to correct situations with a sword.

The “Oxford Junior Dictionary” is wrong. Sin is here to stay because it infects people with alarming regularity. The only thing that changed about sin happened over 2,000 years ago, when a perfect Savior came to save a fallen world.

You can’t just take “sin” out of the dictionary and hope it goes away. It can only be removed because, “God so loved the world that he sent his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall never perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

If only the whole world could earnestly plead to God, “Pardon my wrinkles,” then sin could disappear from dictionaries.