Here you are again, at your favorite restaurant, table dressed in white linen, candles burning. You can see yourself in the reflection of the silverware and the plates are so clean you dare not to touch their gleaming surfaces. You’re pretty sure you could wrap yourself up for days in the napkins… they look so soft, and the glasses… oh they are pristine crystal. You’re alone in the restaurant, the music is playing, but the silence of voices is so quiet your chair is making more noise than you. Chandeliers hang like icicles and the red carpet is as luxurious as a Hollywood red carpet. Still no one in the restaurant, not even a waiter. You’re alone but your date will be arriving soon. You begin pulling at your shirt, making sure you look as good as you did in the mirror twenty minutes ago. Mess with your hair, pull up the socks, and wipe your face for the thirteenth time. You actually get up to adjust the seat, make sure the light will hit you just right when your date walks in. Silence continues. You mess with the silverware, getting tired of waiting… you wait… in silence, as the sound of instruments drowns out your breathing. Your heart pounds as you see the door crack… still no one in the restaurant as your date takes a step through the door, you see them float across the room and approach you like the rising sun. You stand, heart pounding… you have never been this nervous. You reach out your hand as your date extends theirs. You lay your lips on their hands ever so gently, return to your perfect posture and get the nerve to greet your date with the elegance of the most suave man in town. Good evening sin, you’re looking lovely tonight, I’ve been waiting.
Sometimes it feels to me that we wait on sin, we take the time out of our day worrying about sin, avoiding temptation but in the end we greet sin with a welcoming hug like seeing family at Christmas. We hide like children playing hide and go seek, but we always want to be found. Our hunger for sin is real, and we expose ourselves to it like children playing games with their friends. People always talk about temptation and the devil, how the devil tricks you into sinning, how every time we sin we have to battle the devil to the death… but what if it’s us that we have to battle. Once the devil gets us hooked on talking about people behind their backs, drinking, gambling, sex, we get so intrigued we end up becoming a devil to ourselves. We set the table, we let ourselves fall, and we welcome sin as a teenage boy on his first date. Sin becomes comfortable, and no matter the sin, there’s always that core issue… ourselves.
A friend of mine once told me that at the root of any sin, no matter what someone is going through, you can always find a common ground with them. Sometimes the mother who has an affair with her gardener is no different than the teenage boy who can’t help but trash other people on the Internet… they’re both lonely. They both are so far from God they can’t tell their head from a hole in the ground. They have gotten both so used to sin they once again set the table for sin. Sin is reoccurring, because we are disgusting people, sometimes we have to see ourselves in order to see our sin. We spend so much time blaming our frustrations on the devil. Those dern demons are at it again, when really; the addiction to sin is what draws us back to the dinner table. The addiction to our sin, the need for attention, the comfort of a bad boy, is really what calls us to hell and further away from God. If we’re honest with ourselves the next time we get caught up in sin, we can use this opportunity to examine ourselves, what is really the downfall about ourselves that calls us back to reoccurring sin. Whether we find ourselves tempted by alcohol, or the encouragement for hate, we can usually find something about ourselves that calls us back to bashing our friends.
This is what makes the church the gorgeous bride that it is, this is why a group of people that struggle with sin is so beautiful. If we didn’t have each other, we wouldn’t have the strength to overcome sin. We can pursue God till our eyes are bloodshot with tears, but if no one is there physically, who can suffer with you…. the sin becomes so much harder to beat.
Redemption is an amazing phenomenon, and the fact that we go to church and surround ourselves with lonely people in search of redemption, it makes it all worth it. There are so many looking for grace, so many who have come from sin. As my friend also once told me, everyone is recovering from something, or trapped in sin worth recovering from. Whether it’s a mom struggling to not murder her boss at work or the father jealous of a friend’s wife, the root of sin will always be the same. The people who you thought you knew will always get caught in sin they would never dream of telling you, but taking the time to open up to someone can be the key to cancelling your dates with sin. Once we realize the core of our sin, loneliness, isolation from God, it doesn’t seem so weird when your best friend admits to have done cocaine. Once you realize making fun of your sibling is just as tragic as the girl who clings to the guy that makes her feel good for the wrong reasons… redemption can be found with the help of some fellow sinners, and the beauty of God’s grace.
It’s easy to point fingers, easy to make fun of the alcoholic at the end of the table, easy to tease the girl for doing weird things alone in her room. But when we step back, this is also a sin. Grace doesn’t come through the ability to make ourselves feel good because of what someone else does. Redemption comes from an awareness of sin, the fellowship of other sinners, and a willingness to grow out of the sin, to someone greater, someone who has never battled sin, someone who has overcome it, so that we don’t have to go through the pain of loving sin. I am drawn to redemption because I am tired of inviting sin into my life and resting on it for my comfort. I am drawn to redemption because I am so much more. I am drawn to redemption and will in return draw others to redemption. I will ultimately make the choice to no longer judge people for what they’ve done, because I am just as lonely as they are. I will make an effort to be there for my friends, make an effort to help them focus on what they can be without their sin.
We are invited to so much more. Christ is waiting for us, to get up from the table, casually make the way out of the restaurant, wave goodbye, and go to a restaurant where there are so many more… just like us, feasting at the table of redemption.
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