Dear Younger Me

As we seek to bring everyone in our area of influence closer to Christ, it is good to evaluate our own situation. How close to Christ am I? What does being close to Christ really look like? To the outside world, the Pharisee looked close to God. He certainly thought he was, and you could see it in his posture. He stood tall with no regrets, but that was a sham. The reality was he was about as far from God as possible. The Tax Collector stood at a distance, bowed down with regret. This is the proper response of a human being before the holy God, as we have been taught. But is this the intended posture of the Christian, bowed down with regret? Is regret the place where we are supposed to live? No. Rather than freezing the frame on the regretful Tax Collector, we remember that Jesus spoke these words with a purpose and a resolution. The purpose was to shake up those who are self-confident and look down on others, which, at times, is us. The resolution was that one of them went home justified. On this Ash Wednesday, let us remind people that regret itself is not a virtue. God never intended for us to live in regret, only to visit it when necessary. Go home! Go home with joy! Go home justified! Even though we are but dust and ashes...