I saw my sin

Context
Shreve Memorial Library, where I work, held a Staff Development Day yesterday. One of our speakers came to talk with us about the Fish! Philosophy. Fish! has four basic components: play, be there, make their day, and choose your attitude. After I’d been back at work for a little over an hour today, I had a conversation with a coworker that caused me to mentally convert “choose your attitude” into “slam their attitude.” A little while after that, I recognized how wrong, wrong, wrong that was.

Commentary
It is my perception, correct or not, that I have a more sensitive conscience than other people. My sins are like Cole Sear's dead people; I see them all the time. This is one of those traits that some people think must make me unhappy. On the contrary, I consider my conscience a huge blessing from God for a couple of reasons:

1) I’m really, really aware of other people’s sins, too, as you can tell by my comment about this morning. I’m already pretty insufferable about it; imagine if I didn’t see the log in my own eye.

2) I cannot be a Christian without it. People have many different definitions of Christianity, but mine, which probably owes a great deal to my upbringing in the Lutheran Church, is this: it’s the religion that exists because people sin and they need to be saved from it.

I believe in Jesus Christ is the person who saves me from my sin. Having a tender conscience reminds me of my sin and so, perhaps somewhat ironically, reminds me of everything Jesus has done for me. So every time I see myself sinning, I see Jesus. Yay! St. Paul has something to say about whether we should continue sinning so grace can abound, but that’s a topic for another time.

What did you see today?