Undoubtedly United

pc:hannah smith

This poem came to me one morning as I was listening to the radio, after I dropped my daughter off at school. The radio show host was playing a game with the listeners. He was being quite candid about an embarrassing mistake he had made at work and asked others to call in and share similarly. One by one listeners called in telling stories of things that they had done. One person even had started a fire. The interesting thing was that as I heard mistake after mistake, I felt a sense of relief wash over me.

We all make mistakes; a truth so simple and one that I have told my kids time and again, sunk into my heart in a fresh way. Hearing others confess their faults disarmed my own and even helped to normalized them. The simple acceptance that I am a human, and I just don’t get it right a lot of times was settling. Even more comforting was the fact that mistake making is universal. So, as I often do, I took to my phone work out a poem. It’s not close to perfect and probably has a few mistakes ;) but I thought I would share it anyway, because maybe, just maybe, that’s ok.

What if we weren’t so afraid
To share our mistakes,
To serve them up raw
And lay them bare,
Unedited and
Brought into the light?

What if I listened to your story
Without a word,
With hands and heart
Outstretched with grace,
And compassion
And mercy.

How would things change?
How would we change?

The truth is
All of us have sinned,
All fallen short
All made mistakes of
All proportions;
From the, ‘caught on the jumbo-tron’ kind,
To the silent, slow, secret, kind
That chips away at our souls
Day after day.

Here is where we are undoubtedly united,
We have all messed up.
We all have regrets
We all wish things were different,
That we were different in one way or the other,
That we could fix it,
Go back in time,
Have a do-over.

We all wonder if we have gone too far
We walk around limping and broken,
With missing parts,and scars
We doubt that things could ever be right again

And this is where
Jesus,the King of Heaven comes in

He came with compassion
Love, truth and grace,
He paid our debt
And took our place.

His death on the cross
Swallowed up our sin
And death died that day
As He rose again,

And now
The best news is
We can forever
Be with Him.

So let’s stop the hiding,
And trying,
And pretending that our mess isn’t there,
Let’s confess our sins and lay our hearts bare.
Let’s bend our knee
Before the altar of Love,
And be washed,
And sealed
In His life giving blood.

For the joy set before him,
He took our sin.
As no mistake
Is too great for Him.

“For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews12:2

“… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” Romans 3:23

“We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53:6