Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save,
nor his ear too dull to hear.
But your iniquities have separated
you from your God;
your sins have hidden his face from you,
so that he will not hear. – Isaiah 59:1-2 (NIV)
Mary just pointed out to me the cabinet in the church kitchenette were she had put the lunch containers I had forgotten to take home. I had eaten my lunch, washed them, left them to dry, and then completely forgotten about them. On the one hand, I was really excited to find this trove of lunch containers. I had been having trouble finding containers to put leftovers in at home this week. However, seeing where these containers were now requires me to apologize to my family for all my grumbling this week about all of the missing containers. Where could they possibly have gone? Who has left them in their bag or car? We couldn’t possibly have used ALL of them!! There’s no way this could be MY fault! Except, to a large degree, it was. Still, seeing that I had left them at church, my first reaction was not that I made a mistake in overreacting. Rather, my first thought was, “Well, I never put them there, so of course I would not have found them to bring them home!” My immediate reaction was to justify why my actions were reasonable. But really, if I had remembered that I brought them in, I would have found them immediately or looked for them once they were moved. It was my mistake.
How easy it is to point to others rather than ourselves! Even something as minor as forgetting to bring a lunch container home, my immediate reactions were to assume it was others and then deflect blame. It is not easy, even on ultimately trivial things, to accept our fault. It is even harder to own the ways that our shifting blame away from ourselves can hurt others. It happens so quickly in our minds. Yet in doing so it opens new possibilities to connect with others. To admit the mistake is to be vulnerable. While vulnerability is scary because we feel like we might be rejected, the chance of restoring and strengthening relationships make it worth it. Beyond that, now I will have enough lunch and leftover containers to not have to worry for a while if someone leaves one in their bag (I, of course, would never leave one at church again, right? Well, maybe.)