Rev. Ray and Pat Amos
I have seen it so many times throughout the ministry: Those remorseful eyes that said what the tongue refused to speak, “Guilty of sin, and a disappointment to the Lord.” I said to him, “You should be ashamed of yourself.” He just stared back at me. With nothing left for either of us to say I tried to walk away; but he would not leave me. Each time that I looked back, he was looking back at me. I was the preacher, he was the sinner, and I knew it well because he was also the man in the mirror.
“For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.” James 1:23
We have become a nation of people obsessed with the wrongs of others while ignoring our own. “How easily the ‘pointing finger’ writes.”
Dare we bring a mirror to the place we pray? Do you remember Jesus’ parable about the two who went to the temple to pray? One said, “I thank you God that I am good, and that I am not like that sinner over there.” Over there a broken man prayed, “Lord have mercy on a sinner like me.” Jesus said that the penitent sinner went home “right with God.” How will we go home?
“Were it not for grace,
I can tell you where I’d be,
Wandering down some pointless road to nowhere,
With my salvation up to me.
I know how that would go,
The battles I would face,
Forever running but losing the race,
Were it not for grace.”
Grace and Peace, Rev Ray
