Ledger

Even after all these years I still enjoy watching Antiques Roadshow. If I ever could get tickets if it came back to Sacramento I have some pieces of furniture I would want appraised. One piece is an old armoire we purchased years ago when we lived in Minnesota. It stands a little over 6 feet, has a beautiful mirrored door with the original mirror. I put shelves in it and we use it for storage. I probably did some damage to its value by putting in the shelves but I still have the original shelf and hooks originally used for hanging clothes.

The other two pieces were formally owned by my wife's adoptive grandmother. A bureau with four drawers is thought to have been in her family for years and came over on a ship from Scotland. Its in pretty good shape, all original.

The other is a beautiful book case with three sliding glass doors with the original glass. It has "HFF 1904" carved in it. The story is that grandma's father, a prominent physician in Boston, was given it for payment of services rendered by a woman named Helen Francis French, thus the HFF. It has been passed down to several family members for several years. When my wife was a little girl the bottom shelves held her great grandfather's medical books from when he was in school.

Of course the value of anything is determined by market forces. Often on the show an appraiser has to tell someone the market has gone soft on something and the value has shifted downward. It is market forces at play that determine the value of anything.

Its all in the ledger, isn't it? We live in an era where value means everything and everything is for buying and selling.

Unfortunately this way of thinking has influenced how we think of our relationship with God. We tend to keep an internal ledger and we add or subtract to it based upon how we think we are doing. This ledger keeping is a feeble way to live though.

I recently came across a familiar phrase in a familiar passage, I Corinthians 13, "Love does not keep an account of wrongs." Most of us are familiar with this chapter and its incisive description and value of love. What struck me was how well do I love myself? I know the context is about how we should treat and love one another but I turned it inside and found I keep a ledger I hold against myself. We tend to keep a ledger of our sin, don't we? Perhaps what Paul might have also been saying is that we don't love ourselves well if we turn this chapter around and let it read us.

I am also reminded about what Jesus had to say about sin, some very specific sins He addressed in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5-7. He really paints us into the corner doesn't He? If you call a brother an idiot, you've committed murder.  Yikes! That hits close to home most days on my commute, its a bloodbath out there on the roads most days.

I am not suggesting here we be soft on our propensity to sin but I am saying that if it is true about confessing our sin and He is faithful and just and will forgive, then why do we still keep the internal ledger that we use against ourselves? What I am suggesting is that we stop keeping the ledger. It really does no good and is a poor way to decide how we are doing with walking with Jesus.

He said it was finished on the cross. If this is so, then why do we continue to hold these things against ourselves? He said it was finished, we too must accept that we are forgiven. Holding the ledger sets us up for more sin. It does not cause us to sin less.

What will keep us is following the first and greatest commandment, loving the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and strength. Falling in love with the author of love is what will keep us. The ledger does nothing.