I just gave myself a little fright. I tried and failed to log into my email account, more than once. What scared me a little and frustrated me more is that I felt absolutely sure that I entered my password correctly, I knew that I hadn't changed it, and it should be letting me in. The username is automatically filled, so that part wasn't even in question. As I took in a breath to express my frustration and anger at my stupid email provider I happened to notice that my caps lock was on. Click. Easy fix, and I logged in without problems.
So what went wrong, besides the fact that I didn't rest well last night and have had no caffeine this morning? Nothing really. For good reasons, security, they set their page up so that ******* show up instead of the characters I type. Because of this I can not see that it's typing caps when it shouldn't be and vice versa due to the caps lock being on. Knowing that I hit the right keys I don't understand why it's not working and start to worry about something having gone wrong with my account or of being hacked, and I do it all again, getting more and more frustrated with each fail and afraid that they will lock me out if I get it wrong one too many times.
They'll do that. After a few failed attempts to put in the right password they will shut the account down and lock you out. We do the same thing with people. After a certain number of failed attempts to prove trustworthiness we shut down that account, whether it's a friendship account, family account. business account or what have you. The number of attempts may vary, but every person has a limit, and once it's reached the relationship is closed until the untrustworthy one jumps through enough hoops to prove they deserve another chance.
I am so grateful that our Daddy isn't like that! His mercies are new every morning, which is good because it usually doesn't take long into the day before I've already fallen short of Holiness and Righteousness. When it comes to reacting and doing right, I simply can't get the password right. My fingers can't type the characters without mistakes and I can't seem to ever know when the caps lock is on. But thanks to His amazing grace, I can have forgiveness, peace to rid myself of the frustration and fear, the guidance of the Holy Spirit to reveal the problem, and then the power to type it right doesn't even come from me. That's what grace is all about. It not only bypasses the security that we could never get through on our own, but makes it possible for us to live as we should. It is the forgiveness for the failures and the power not to fail at the same time.
Today let us cling to grace and let go of condemnation, fear and frustration. We can go right into the presence of God. The blood of Christ covers all our mistakes. The power of the Spirit is in us so that we can please Him who created us. Rejoice our password has been accepted and we've been allowed in...even though we got it wrong!
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