Weekly Words

Repentance

As hard as this is to believe, my child is not perfect. I know, I know this was as hard for me to come to grips with as it is for you right now. However, it is true. My two year old son does things that frustrate, irritate and even embarrass me from time to time. One of those things is biting. Interestingly enough, “Little B.A.” not only bites in some moments of anger, but if he is playing and gets too excited for some reason he bites. Though early childhood experts try to convince me this is normal because toddlers have a hard time channeling their excitement, I can’t tell you how upset and astonished I am whenever my son goes in for a human chomp. So you can just imagine how embarrassed I was when I got a call the other day that Bryce had bitten another child at his school. His teacher calls me and has this “don’t get too outraged at what I am about to tell you” tone in her voice as she attempts to explain to me that my child bit one of his classmates.

It seems that Bryce and one of his best friends were in the back of the line playing when all of a sudden the teacher hears a child yell with a loud cry. When the teacher asks the young boy what’s wrong he commences to explain that Bryce bit him. After assuring me that the child was alright, the teacher begins to explain to me how they dealt with Bryce after the incident. Then in an attempt to assuage my concern that my child may be a classroom terror, she tells me that she really felt that Bryce somehow understood the gravity of the situation and was genuinely sorry for biting his friend. When I asked why she felt that way, she said upon seeing that his friend was crying out of hurt and pain, Bryce began to cry as well. She felt that moment was important and would encourage Bryce not to bite again. I then reflected and realized that whenever Bryce bit me I did not respond with hurt and pain, but rather with anger. Maybe Bryce needed to really experience the hurt caused by biting to internalize how biting was a horrible act.

All of a sudden my sermonic antennae went up, and I realized that what Bryce felt in that moment was REPENTANCE! Upon seeing the pain he caused his friend, he was now authentically hurt. Bryce helped me to understand that repentance is more than just “sorry.” It is a deep realization of the hurt that we have caused impacting us in a way that fundamentally alters who we want to be and what we want to do in the future. I then began to lament the fact that true repentance often escapes so many of us. Somewhere along our path of growing up, we begin to become callous to the hurt we sometimes cause others, ourselves, and God. Yes, we may feel bad, or have a moment of regret. Yet do we really have a life altering encounter with the wrong that we’ve done that pains us so deeply that we can never be the same? Or at least not want to ever be the same? Repentance like this only comes from the innocence and purity that still exists in the spirit of a child, and can still be revived in our spirit if we would only seek it in the uncontaminated, uncorrupted love of God.

Humbly in Christ’s Love,
Pastor B.A. Jackson