In The Wilderness: What Is This Doing Here?

Again, this morning in the book of Numbers chapter 15, verses one through three and twenty-two through thirty-one. It's our custom to read God's word aloud together. So if you want to find that in your bulletin or on the screen, I'll just warn you that after the first three verses are really a sentence fragment. So if you're reading along, you're like, "I don't know where the verb is." Okay, just hang in. It's the context for the rest of the section that I wanted to make sure that you got. So if you would join your voices with me as we read God's word aloud.

The Lord instructed Moses, "Speak to the Israelites and tell them, 'When you enter the land I am giving you to settle in, and you make a food offering to the Lord from the herd or flock, either a burnt offering or a sacrifice to fulfill a vow or as a freewill offering or at your appointed festivals to produce a pleasing aroma for the Lord. When you sin unintentionally and do not obey all these commands that the Lord spoke to Moses, all that the Lord has commanded you through Moses, from the day the Lord issued the commands and onward throughout your generations. And if it was done unintentionally without the community's awareness, the entire community is to prepare one young bull for a burnt offering as a pleasing aroma to the Lord with its grain offering and drink offering according to the regulation and one male goat as a sin offering. The priest will then make atonement for the entire Israelite community so that they may be forgiven for the sin was unintentional. They are to bring their offering, a food offering to the Lord and their sin offering before the Lord for their unintentional sin. The entire Israelite community and the alien who resides among them will be forgiven since it happened to all the people unintentionally. If one person sins unintentionally, he is to present a year old female goat as a sin offering. The priest will then make atonement before the Lord on behalf of the person who acts in error, sinning unintentionally, and when he makes atonement for him, he will be forgiven. You are to have the same law for the person who acts in error, whether he is an Israelite or an alien who resides among you. But the person who acts defiantly, whether native or resident alien, blasphemes the Lord. That person is to be cut off from his people. He must certainly be cut off because he has despised the Lord's word and has broken his command. His guilt remains on him.'" — Numbers 15:1-3, 22-31

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Do you know the phrase, "What's this doing here?" That's a phrase many exasperated parents say. Like, "What is the milk doing in the pantry? What is this doing here? What is a screwdriver doing in the silverware drawer? What is this doing here?" Right? It's an idiom that we say, but it's actually a really helpful phrase when you're reading the Bible.

Now, there are two dangers when we read the Bible. One is not asking any questions. Some of us have been taught you don't ask questions when you read the Bible, and actually it's really important that we ask questions. But also, we need to ask the right questions of the Bible. There are bad questions. God is not interested in giving an explanation for all things. So when we come to Him with all of our "why" questions, God's word is not an encyclopedia where you can look up natural disasters or what happened and why. And when we come to God's word saying, "How do I have a problem-free life," God's word is not a cookbook where you can find the recipe to have a problem-free life. It doesn't work that way.

But this question—"What is this doing here?"—is really helpful when we look at Scripture. And this passage may be a prime example for that. This is a really helpful question for this passage, and it shows us what we're going to look at this morning. It's my big idea: We're going to look at the vast differences between how we look at and think about human sin and how God looks at and thinks about human sin.

Here's my outline. They're all C words: canceling, not canceled. Canceling, canceled, categories, but cohesive, costly, and communal. I'll go over all those again so you'll get them. But I want to give notes as I do when I use somebody else's work. A friend of mine, Walter Henneger, preached on this passage. He's a pastor down in Atlanta, really helpful for me and my approach to this. So I'll give him credit.

Canceling vs. Canceled

First, so what's the first big difference between how God looks at human sin and how we look at it? And it's this: canceling versus canceled. Now we're all familiar with this phrase that's very much in the air right now: cancel culture. So all these people—Kanye West, Kevin Spacey, James Franco, Matt Damon, J.K. Rowling, Will Smith, Louis C.K., Garrison Keillor, Shia LaBeouf, Armie Hammer, Ellen DeGeneres, among lots of others. I may not even have the right list.

I just asked Google, like some of you all know me, I am terrible with pop culture. So if some of these people are off the list, just keep that to yourself or you can add other names. But we're all familiar with that word "canceled." It means that somebody does something that's taboo—one strike you are out. This is all over the place right now. We're in a place where we're like, we're done with this person.

But before I hear lots of Christians get really high and mighty about this, can't believe in cancel culture. But before we get high and mighty about that, let's just think about us. Because I think that we're all experts in the sins and failures and foibles of other people. So let me just test this one out. I'm just going to test this with you all this morning.

Think about your workplace. Who might be the worst worker in your workplace—lazy person, somebody you can't rely on? I heard some chuckles. Or extended family. Let's talk about who do you not want to be seated next to at the extended family meal? Or is it somebody maybe right here—somebody that's hard to be around? Or think about this: those of you who are homeowners or have an apartment. Do you know who on your block is the lame neighbor and who's the great neighbor? Who do you know in your apartment building you're like, this is the lame neighbor, this is the great one?

We're specialists. We are expertly trained in the failures of other people and in the foibles of other people, in the sins of other people, in the annoying habits. We wouldn't call them sins, but we're really good at identifying this. We also have a heart of cancel culture. And our cancel culture has really brought about a deep fear within a lot of people, right? Fear—terrified of being canceled. Nobody wants to admit that they are a misogynist or racist or an ableist. Nobody wants to have to say that. People are now afraid to voice any opinion in public for fear that somebody is going to disagree with them. They almost like hold back—unless I know we're all on the same page here.

And of course, there are legitimate things. I'm not saying don't take me too far or send me an email. There are things that need to be called out in culture. There's a right place for accountability. But when we see this one strike you're out thing, it's exhausting. And it makes me wonder, where's this going to end?

God's Approach in Numbers 15

And I want you to contrast that with the approach that we see in Numbers chapter 15. Let me remind you where we are in this book. Numbers 15 lies in the middle of all of these testing narratives. And we've watched over the last few weeks all these people keep failing the test. Last week, James preached on Moses' sister and brother, Miriam and Aaron. We saw how the entire community grumbled, even Moses. We saw also the leaders of the 12 tribes who go scout out the land. They come back and the majority report is, "This is too bad for us." And they fail over and over. And we're going to see three more coming up after this where the people continually fail. And so we have to ask this question: What is this doing here? What is this doing here? And particularly on the heels of the greatest failure in the book of Numbers.

I mean, Numbers 15 comes after Numbers 14—big surprise. Numbers 14 is where the people had looked at the promised land and said, "No, thanks. We don't trust you, God. We're not going in." God's like, "Okay, I'm not going to make you go in. Wander for forty more years." It's brutal—the greatest failure in all the book of Numbers. And God is not done. I mean, what is this doing here?

Look at the most hopeful words in this passage. Chapter 15, verse one. You read them. What does it say?

When you enter the land

Not "if you enter the land." Not "maybe if you pull your act together, you'll get into the land." Not "we'll see if you make it into the land." When? What hopeful words on the heels of the greatest failure of God's people to this point. When you got in—it's going to happen. I'm not done with Israel. Israel is not canceled.

What is God doing here? What is this doing here? God is not done with Israel. And my friend Walter, he says it this way. I think this is a great statement. He says, "In our culture, we love to cancel sinners, but God loves canceling sin."

God loves canceling sin. This is why this is right here. I mean, how encouraging is this?

And look at what else we see in this passage. Remember as we've been walking through this book that there are people who came out of Egypt with them who were not Hebrews. They were people that they're called various things in different translations—the riffraff, the rabble—this vast multitude that come with the Hebrew people out of Egypt, and they're like, "This is my ticket out."

And what happens here in Numbers 15, the alien and stranger is included in the worship of Israel. You get to approach God the same way that the full blooded Israelites get to. There's this picture of incredible grace that's just all over this community. Such a beautiful picture.

First difference, canceling not canceled. Second difference between how God views sin, how we view it is categories, but cohesive. Categories, but cohesive.

Now it's helpful to be a pastor over a longer period of time, which just means I'm feeling old today. Pastoring in the 90s and in the 2000s—this was the trend in Western culture: postmodernism. And postmodernism went like this. The trend was anything goes, you do you, I do me, leave me alone, right? Like, who are you to say that something's wrong? Live and let live. The only sin in America was to call something a sin. And the only statement that you could make about ultimate truth was that there's no such thing as ultimate truth with a capital T, which is a statement of ultimate truth. It didn't make any sense.

And it seemed to me that this was going to keep going forever. This was just the way the culture was going. But if you've been paying attention, you know something has radically shifted over the last couple of years. It's like the pendulum went from over here over there. The pendulum has swung a huge swing and we are now in one of the most moralistic periods of American culture, at least in my lifetime, where suddenly everybody cares about virtue. What do we do on social media? We signal our virtue. Everybody is a specialist in the sins of other people. Everybody's calling out stuff all the time right now, saying what's right and wrong. And social media is not live and let live. It's shoulds and oughts, right? Suddenly there are things that are treated as sins everywhere, and they're taboo, and you better pay attention because you can be in the right one day and in the wrong the next. Things are changing.

Now, this is where it's really helpful to be a student of history. If you paid attention in your history class, you know that this pendulum swing thing that happens in culture goes on all the time. For example, 1700s Europe, the time of the French Revolution was a time of live and let live. Anything goes, right? This influenced our revolution in America. It was, who are you to say something's wrong? And then suddenly, the next century, the pendulum swings over, and you get Victorian England, one of the most moralistic periods in British history. It's a time of virtue signaling, everybody saying what's right and what's wrong. The list of sins being changed out all the time.

What I want to say to you is, look people, this too will pass. There's nothing new. But here's the takeaway. Over the last few years, our culture is saying something that we as Christians need to listen to. Culture is right about one thing in this: that there are some sins that are worse than other sins. That's what our culture says. There's some sins that are worse, we're getting really upset about canceling somebody over, and others are like, who cares? Now that is not entirely true—I mean, the worst sin in our culture right now is offending somebody in some way, right? But Christians in the church can actually learn something that's a correction to an overstatement by Christians.

See in the past, we've said things like this: all sins are the same before God. And I know where we're getting that from. We're saying that because one breach of God's law trips you up into breaking other commandments as well, or all sins have the same penalty, or all sins deserve and require the atonement of Jesus for us to be forgiven, right? We'd say all those things. But to say no sin is different from any other sin or worse than any other sin is actually an overstatement.

And Numbers 15 is here to help us. And that's something our culture is saying that we need to see that's in our Bibles too. There are categories of sin. You hear what was in this passage? There are unintentional sins, sins done in error. There are intentional sins. There are defiant sins. There are individual sins. There are corporate sins. And they're not all the same. They have different remedies and they're different.

So listening to what our culture is saying, it's saying something that our Bible is saying actually. I don't know if you know this, but CTK, we're a confessional church. Now that's not on our slogan somewhere, but a confessional church means that we believe, we adhere to a statement of doctrine. It's not the Bible, but it's a summary of what's in the Bible.

And our statement of doctrine, the Westminster Confession of Faith, has a shorter catechism of questions and answers that reinforce this very same thing—that there are differences in sin. Now this is really old language, but I want you to hear this.

Question 83: Are all transgressions of the law equally heinous, equally bad? Here's the answer: Some sins in themselves and by reason of several aggravations—I'll explain that—are more heinous in the sight of God than others.

Question 84: What doth every sin deserve, right? Every sin deserves God's wrath and curse both in this life and the life which is to come.

Question 85: What does God require of us to do for sin? To escape the wrath and curse of God, sin requires us faith in Jesus Christ, repentance on the life, and diligent use of the outward means whereby Christ communicates all the benefits of redemption.

Simply put, what's this saying? There are categories. That's really helpful. Now we don't use that word "by several aggravations." We don't use that phrase very often. What does it mean? What does it mean that some sins are worse than others? Here's where Numbers 15 really helps us.

Now let me remind you of what we're reading. Hebrew works kind of like websites work. You know how you have hyperlinked text and you can click on that on a website and it'll take you somewhere else. Hebrew works like this. We've been seeing this all over the book of Numbers. You read a little phrase and in Hebrew, it's the same language that's back in Genesis or the same language that's in Leviticus. Here, this language highlights words that are back in Leviticus one, Leviticus five through six, all about how we deal with sin. It's a hyperlink, and this passage is not meant to be all those statements about all the different kinds of sin. It merely reminds you there are different categories of sin and God teaches on this all over the place.

Categories of Sin

Let's look at what this means though for us. So it tells us this: there are categories of sin related to intention. You read this here—there are intentional sins and unintentional sins. We do this in our court of law. Know the difference between manslaughter and third degree murder. Manslaughter is when someone kills somebody on accident, right? Negligence, car wrecks, something like that. But third degree murder is when I thought about this for a long time. I've been planning on this for a long time to kill you. That's the difference. And we treat those differently in our law code and so does God in His law code.

Second, there are categories of sin related to whether a sin was individual or committed with other people—communal. There are categories of sin related to the impact on other people. This is really helpful for us. I mean, we know this: if you're a leader, your sin affects other people in different ways than if you're just an individual. If your sin was private or public, personal or impacting others, that makes a difference.

And finally, there's the category of defiant sins. So one clarification: defiant and intentional sins are not the same thing. An intentional sin is, I wanted to do this. And it's clear elsewhere in Scripture, God does forgive intentional sins. Leviticus five and six, the Torah says that intentional sins like fraud, lying, and theft—those are atoned for. You need to confess those; there's atonement made for those. Leviticus one tells us burnt offerings are made to make atonement for intentional sins. And we need to be honest about our own hearts. There's a lot of our sinning that's mixed. It's mixed motives, intentional and unintentional.

But there's another category here that I know has caused some of you some fear from the very beginning when we read this: the category of defiant sins. This is that I wanted to do this and I don't care that God is God. It's defined here in Hebrew as the sin of the high hand. Now I want you to picture my hand like this, right? I'm shaking my fist at God. This is, "I don't want to be forgiven. I don't want you. I don't want anything of you in this world or my life." That's what sin of a high hand is defined as. It's not the same as being frustrated with God or angry with God. It's cursing God. It's rejecting God as God.

This is in 1 John 5—we read about the unforgivable sin—and Christians are always worried, "Did I forget? Did I commit the unforgivable sin last Tuesday night and I didn't realize I was doing it?" That's not what that is. The unforgivable sin is the high hand defiant: "I reject you God, I do not want you." In other words, there's no remedy here for defiant sins, because the person doesn't want a remedy for their sins. You get it? This is somebody who says, "I'm cut off from God because I want to be cut off from God." Just like the unforgivable sin is a cold hearted, defiant rejection of God.

Now, what's the point? Why do I need to know all this, Jeff? Why?

The point here is that there are categories, but they're cohesive. They're coherent. They make sense. You can go and say, I need to understand sin and you can go through your Bible and there's a coherent, logical, consistent way that God looks at sin. That's not the way it is in our culture right now. It changes all the time. The rules change all the time. You don't know where you stand. You could be right this week and canceled next week.

But here's the thing about the Bible. The Bible gives us these coherent, cohesive categories that are really helpful for us. Let me show you four reasons why.

First, the fact that they're coherent categories humbles us and protects us from self-righteousness. Because we can never say "I would never do it." It robs us of that kind of pride—that smugness where I'm better than other people. There's no room for moral superiority because you understand that there are unintentional things that you do that are still called sins. Our culture doesn't have room for this. If you sin and it hurt someone, if you do something that impacts other people and you say, "I didn't mean it, it didn't count"—but the Bible says no. There are things that we do that are unintentional that still hurt people. And there's a provision for that. There are categories for that. That's really helpful. Do you see how that robs us of moral superiority?

Second, the fact that coherent categories for sin helps us to be gracious with other sinners. When someone hurts you, what do we say to ourselves? "How could they do this to me? Don't they know my story? Don't they know my sensitivities? Don't they know how this would damage me?" And the reality is, when we adopt this view of sin, the answer is no. Everybody's got blind spots. Everybody has things where we think we know what we're doing, but we're doing unintentional things all the time. And so it removes—or it gives us a place to be gracious to other people, to be like, "I get it, because you're like me. You've got blind spots."

Third, the fact that they're coherent categories for sin means that when you sin, you can actually see progress in your life—and this is really important. How many of you, if you've been a Christian for a long time, struggle to feel like you're making any progress? Like, "Dang, I just feel like I'm continually a mess." This stuff helps us because it helps us to say, "Okay, there are different categories."

Maybe your sinning becomes less deliberate. You're less and less like, "I just chose to do this and I don't care," and more and more you're like, "Oh, I feel conviction about that." Maybe your sin moves from outward acts to internal heart issues—which is not great, but it's better. It's better that it doesn't hurt other people the way it did before. Or maybe the scope or danger of your sin lessens in terms of its impact. Or your desire to please the Lord in areas that formerly you didn't want to begins to grow. You're like, "I actually feel a little bit more conscience-stricken about things I didn't used to." That's progress. That's good. Don't you want to be encouraged in some of that? To see, "I can make progress in the Christian life"?

Last one here is to invite us to repent. My favorite Psalm for this week is Psalm 139, where it's this all-inclusive passage:

You know when I go out and I come in. You know what I'm about to do. You know my thoughts. You know me when I'm awake or asleep. Nothing is hidden from your sight. — Psalm 139

It goes over all these ways that David's like, "God knows all these things about me." And then the last line is really wild because David prays this last line: "Search me, Lord, and know my heart." He's just described how God searches him and knows his heart, but it's like, "Know me more. Know me deeper." And it's an invitation to learn more of your blind spots. "Lord, would you show me ways that I'm sinning and help me to learn to repent?"

So again: sin is cancel. God is about canceling sin. He doesn't cancel people. Second, it's cohesive in its categories.

Costly and Communal

Finally, sin is costly and communal. Two dynamics I want you to see: costly and communal.

First, we've missed sometimes how sin is costly because we don't have to deal with it the way the Israelites did. My brother who lives in Charleston owns a farm in Virginia and a restaurant in Charleston, and he raises meat for his restaurant. So he's raised cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, turkeys—a bunch of stuff. And I was talking to him recently and he was telling me he had some cows die on his farm and I'd never thought about this before. I'm like, "Oh, what do you do with that? You have to dispose of them." And that cost him around $2,000 a cow.

I was like, Oh, never really thought about that. What's it cost you for a goat? Oh, a goat is worth about $800. A sheep is about $300. So in other words, he loses money every time something dies on his farm that's not taken to the market. It helps me remember that this is what the Israelites did every time they had to sacrifice for sin. It cost them something literally off their farm, something disappeared. And it also was communal.

Do you see that in this passage, the way that the sin of one affects the community? So let's imagine you're living back in Israelite times, you're living in the land and your next door neighbor is Hezekiah. He goes over to Hezekiah's house and you're like, Hey, your goat's missing. What happened to your goat? You realize suddenly as you say that three things: Hezekiah sinned, Hezekiah is repentant, and Hezekiah had to pay for that. He lost a goat.

Or let's say Hezekiah comes over to your house and he's like, Man, your sheep is gone. It's like losing a lawnmower, right? I mean, I had to lose a lawnmower. What does Hezekiah know about you? Three things. You sinned, you've repented, and it cost you something. We're just not aware of that. We're not aware sometimes of the cost even relationally, and how it impacts one another and the cost that it takes us to humble ourselves and repent.

Ted Lasso and the Cost of Confession

So this week, Ted Lasso season three is coming up, been waiting for forever for this. Some of you don't know what that is. That's a TV show about an American football coach who's hired to go coach a British football team, except in England football is a different sport than it is in America. It's what we call soccer. So it's a comedy of errors because this yokel kind of guy Ted Lasso is hired to go coach this team.

Well, he's hired by this woman, Rebecca, and this is in season one. He's hired by Rebecca, and he thinks he's hired to make the team successful. But Rebecca is going through a nasty divorce with her husband and she knows the one thing that her husband, ex-husband now, loves is that soccer team. So she begins to do everything she can behind the scenes to sabotage Ted Lasso and undermine him and make sure that he looks like a fool and make sure the team loses.

And over time, what happens is she develops a liking to Ted Lasso and she actually begins to appreciate him. He, by his kindness, by the way he treats her, sort of worms his way into her heart. And over time she begins to feel bad about this. Like I've actively worked against this man and he actually is a good guy. And so she talks to her friend Keely about this because she's like, should I say anything? She doesn't want to confess. She tells Keely and she makes a case for withholding the truth. She says, "What would be the point of telling him now of all I've done? It wouldn't change anything."

And Keely says like perfect words here: "It would change how I feel about you." Nailed it. What is Keely saying? Like how we deal with the Lord in our sin affects one another. It affects one another. Our sin is costly. We forget this part—bulls and sheep and goats were all placeholders for the death of the Son of God on a cross for our sins. And it costs us too to repent. It costs us our reputation. It costs us our view of ourselves. It may cost us in relationship categories. It costs, but it's also still communal.

You know, we're connected to one another and we don't see this often about how our sin and whether or not we deal with the Lord in our sin affects each other, but it really does.

A Personal Story

I want to close with this application and this is not a very proud story, but I'll tell you. Several years ago, I was invited by the director of our local affiliate of LAMP Seminary, a guy named Marcus Wrench. His family sits here right in the second row, most Sundays. Marcus and Holly invited me to come and speak to this group about emotional intelligence.

Marcus and Holly have a son named Theo. Theo is my favorite worshiper in our church. Theo has autism and Down syndrome. He's the only person who's allowed to bring a sword to church. He brings a Nerf sword every Sunday. And Theo is nonverbal, but man, he is up here every Sunday. If you feel stomping, that is Theo. He loves the music and he loves the Lord's Supper. I mean, I love watching him worship.

So back to the story. I was invited by Marcus to come teach this group gathering of all our seminary students who are preparing for ministry on emotional intelligence. And I said, you know, you got the wrong Bradford teaching on this. Susan is really the one who knows about emotional intelligence. I'm kind of on the short bus when it comes to emotional intelligence. And I said short bus at least three times during this talk.

And you know, afterward, Marcus was like, "Hey, man, thanks for teaching today. That was really great. I really appreciate that. I wanted to ask you a question. Have you ever thought about the word short bus? What that means or where that comes from?" And I was like, kind of clueless. Now why didn't I think about that, you know? Oh, I'm talking about your family.

Without these categories and understanding of sin, that conversation could have gone really differently. Marcus was incredibly gracious to me in this. He and Holly laugh at me a little bit about this. It's kind of a joke within their home. They're very sweet to me about this. They've forgiven me and they're very kind, but this could have gone a very different way, right?

He could have been like, "Oh, you're done. Canceled. I knew it. I knew you're going to let me down. I knew that the leaders here were bad." That's one way it could have gone. Another way it could have gone is me going like, "I didn't intend to, so that's your problem. I didn't mean to hurt you. That was an unintentional sin. So that's kind of on you." When really it doesn't matter the intention—the impact was the same.

And what happened instead was a reconciliation and grace.

The Season of Lent

Brothers and sisters, this is the church season, the church calendar we call Lent. And at our church, we're not hardcore on the church calendar often, but we love to talk about Advent and Lent in particular. Those are the two seasons we talk about the most. It's a season when the church takes a look inward at our own hearts.

Let me just out myself as the chief sinner here—not wanting to look at my heart on the inside. I don't like looking on the inside. I don't like knowing my motivations and what's going on and my blind spots and all those things. But I want to encourage you today what I need, okay? Which is not to run to the cross and run on. This is what Christians often do: "Hey, it's paid for, right? Like my sin—yeah, you saw it, but it's paid for. It's covered, right?"

I just want to out myself: I want to short circuit the Lord's work. I don't want to ask questions about what made me do that or what's going on on the inside. But I want to encourage us and myself to spend some time in Lent looking at the why behind our sin. To ask the question: "Hey, what's that doing here?" For our sins—the things that we do that are unintentional, the things that we do that have impact even though we didn't intend to, the ways that we sin intentionally and unintentionally, the blind spots that we have. Ask: what is this doing here?

Diagnostic Questions

Let me give you a couple of diagnostic questions for yourself, just for your own reflection this week.

First, are there sins that you need to repent of to another person today? To go to them and just say, "I'm really sorry. Would you please forgive me?"

Are there blind spots in your heart that the Lord is revealing—that somebody around you sees and they know, but the Lord is beginning to reveal to you?

Have your actions or words impacted people that you didn't intend to hurt, and you've not been willing to see that or take responsibility for it?

Is there self-righteousness in your heart toward a fellow sinner?

Are there people you've canceled? We love to cancel sinners. My friend Walter says, "God loves canceling sin." Can you let Him do that today?

Prayer

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you for your word. There is nothing like your word. We thank you for the hope of this passage. When they enter the land, we thank you, Father, for the way that you deal with us as sinners in our blindness and foolishness—the ways that we don't even see ourselves, the ways that we want to get out and get away and move away quickly, move to the cross quickly. Lord, teach us, Father, to see our sin, and in doing so, to treasure Jesus.

We pray, Father, Lord, that you would help us to run to the cross today, but also, Father, to sit with our own hearts and to see what we don't want to see—that we might love you more and know you more and know ourselves more.

We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Would you stand?