This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practise the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1John1:5-10)
Thought
As many of you will be aware, I love to bake and in particular I enjoy baking bread. I probably make between one and three loaves of bread every week. I have enjoyed all the loaves of bread that I have made, but one of my favourite loaves to make is a wholemeal seeded loaf. I have made it so many times now that I don’t need to look at the recipe anymore and I enjoy experimenting with different types of seed in order to change the flavour of the bread. A bread with mostly poppy seeds in it is very different to one with mostly sunflower or pumpkin seeds.
Last week I started making my seeded loaf but noticed after a little while that it didn’t feel the same as I would have expected it to; it felt rather heavy in my hands when I was kneading it. You get used to what the dough should feel like, but I decided to continue and left the bread to prove. The only problem was that nothing much was happening, it definitely wasn’t behaving as it should as it wasn’t getting any bigger. Finally about two hours after I had started the bread making process I realised what I had done. I had forgotten to add the yeast to the mixture right at the beginning. This was a bit of a disaster, as without the yeast there was no raising agent in the bread, so no wonder things were not happening.
I decided to try an experiment, after all what did I have to lose at this point, and so I added the yeast to my mixture and kneaded it again so that the yeast would be incorporated and then left the bread to see what would happen. The end result was a bread that tasted great but was a little flatter than it should have been.
We all make mistakes and mistakes can have small or large consequences. In the first letter of John, John makes it very clear that we all sin and that we deceive ourselves if we say that we don’t. Our sins, like our mistakes can also have small or large consequences which we have to live with. The good news of the New Testament however is that if we confess our sins to God, he forgives us and we are cleansed from our sin. This allows us to come before God as forgiven people free from the guilt of sin. And it does not matter how many times we mess us, how many times we sin, if we are really sorry for what we have done then God will forgive us every time. And with his forgiveness we can go on to be better people.
Prayer (Holy God, confession)
Holy and strong God, forgive our weakness.
Holy and wise God, forgive our foolishness.
Holy and loving God, forgive our hardness.
Holy and generous God, forgive our selfishness.
Holy and faithful God, forgive our fickleness.
Holy and gentle God, forgive our toughness.
Forgive us, Holy God, forgive.
Amen
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