Because of Jesus the sin we cannot forget God does not remember.

God is inviting you today to appropriately grieve your pains and losses and to acknowledge the world is seriously broken.

I agree we have enough books that attempt to explain why God allows suffering, presumably in a way that lets God off the hook. And while much smarter men than I have constructed elaborate systems in this pursuit, they are by definition exercises in speculation.

God reminds us again and again that things between He and us are forever fixed. They are the rendezvous points where God declares to us concretely that the debt has been paid, the ledger put away, and that everything we need, in Christ we already possess. This re-convincing produces humility, because we realize that our needs are fulfilled. We don’t have to worry about ourselves anymore. This in turn frees us to stop looking out for what we think we need and liberates us to love our neighbor by looking out for what they need.

The bad news that we are all guilty is met with the best news that God loves and forgives guilty people.

If the depths of everyone's sin was made public, we would all be much more gracious to each other.

God wants every local church to be the first place people think to go when they've really messed up...not the last.