New or Old

 

I don’t know about you, but as we begin a “new” year, I often look back in history to see what was happening not only during the most recent “last year” but also decades ago.  There is one thing that I have learned from this exercise…we humans seem to continue to make the same mistakes over and over and over again.

It’s one thing to make one kind of mistake, learn from it and not repeat that mistake, but it is entirely different when we make the same exact mistake over and over again.

When God created us, he afforded us “free will”, which is a wonderful gift, and I can’t imagine what our lives would be like without it.   However, I think that we are often seeing demonstrated lately is “free will” without any thought as to what the consequences of the act may be.

As children, we all made mistakes.  When our parents became aware of those mistakes, often, they would use it as a “teaching moment”.  Depending on the exact situation, that “teaching” could be a calm explanation as to why it was wrong to do whatever it was, or it could have been a non-stop trip to one’s room and loss of a meal or t.v. viewing or being able to go outside or some other form of “grounding”.

As we grew into adulthood, hopefully those “lessons learned” stayed with us.  But, as I view today’s news reports I can’t help but wonder what went wrong???

Thankfully, in our Episcopal Tradition, as part of our celebration of Holy Eucharist, we always confess our sins, and we say:

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.

It is this opportunity to unburden ourselves that helps us to continue to function and work on being better humans.  It is not a “get out of jail free "card; however, we must continually strive to not make the same mistakes and to continue to work at being better members of God’s family.

So as we together face all of the challenges that 2022 will provide, let us remember our past mistakes, and, along with God, strive to do what is just, fair and right for all.