Syrup is great on pancakes

For my birthday dinner this year I had one of my favorite meals, pancakes and bacon. Breakfast for dinner has always been a fun thing, but pancakes and bacon seem great any time! Of course a key to the whole meal is great syrup. I find runny, thin syrup to be faux syrup. It needs to have some texture, and I need to know that it could stop a runner in mid sprint. That's real syrup.

Which naturally leads me to unforgiving and judgement.

Unforgiving and hardness of heart have been a running theme in my reading as of late, and so it has heightened my awareness of their realities in daily life. The absolutely brutal nature of how each of them can disect another person, and stiffen the person whose heart has begun to harden.

When someone wrongs us, hurts us, or just doesn't behave in ways we think they should, it seems like a thick, rich syrup gets poured onto the hands of our heart. When you get that kind of real syrup on your hands, licking just won't do the trick, nor will a quick rinse under water. The residue just lingers and your hands will have a stickiness that just won't go away. It's almost like your hands need to be power washed, as if to blast that first layer of skin off as well. Other wise, everything you touch seems to cling to you like a frightened cat.

Without forgiveness, genuine let it go forgiveness, everything just feels a bit sticky. Everything they say and do today, is now heard and seen through the echo and lens of yesterday.

To forgive takes some gut wrenching, soul work. It is staring at the cross that held Jesus and having an ever softening heart absorb the truth that ALL sin was killed there, back then.

"It is finished."

The only looking back we do is to the cross, devouring the hurt and pain of life, and the resurrection that means ALL things are made new. You are not that poor choice. You are found forgiven on the other side, invited to live in the new life offered.

Because syrup is great on pancakes, but it can make a mess of our heart.