You know that one thing you’ve been saying you’re going to quit doing because you deep-down know it’s keeping you from getting closer to God, but you’ve now decided to wait until New Year’s day when you can make a full-on, proper resolution for the entire coming year?
Guess who’s deceiving themselves?
Self- deception is subtle… that’s how it works!
The following lyrics from Simon Cowell’s “Most Hated Song,” (by his own admission) make the point nicely:
“When I’m stuck with a day that’s gray and lonely
I just stick out my chin, and grin, and say, oh
The sun’ll come out tomorrow
Oh, you gotta hang on ’til tomorrow, come what may
Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you, tomorrow
You’re always a day away!”
But ain’t that just the problem! “Always a day away!!”
The truth is: “We don’t need to be stuck with a day that’s gray and lonely!”
Yet, we nonetheless feel a little better whenever we decide to “repent tomorrow”…. “It’s a good step for today, right?” [We ask ourselves privately but then don’t answer our own question.]
We always tend to water down the truth regarding our own wretchedness, even changing “saved a wretch like me” to “saved and set me free” in the spiritual classic Amazing Grace, presumably to not offend the faithful!
“God doesn’t make junk” kind of thinking.
God may not make junk, but we sure do! We just don’t like to admit it, to anyone, including to ourselves!
We never miss an opportunity to diminish our awareness of our TRUE nature, which is a corrupted, one, one in which we are enslaved to sin and too weak to escape its hold on our own.
In today’s readings for the feast of the murder of the Holy Innocents [babies] (something happening in a far more ramped-up way today, with the abortion of tens of millions of babies each year) we read in the first reading all about how if we think we aren’t sinners in need of a savior, we’re self-deceived.
Read all the readings for today, but here’s the first reading to get you going. Powerful!
“Beloved: This is the message that we have heard from Jesus Christ
and proclaim to you:
God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.
If we say, “We have fellowship with him,”
while we continue to walk in darkness,
we lie and do not act in truth.
But if we walk in the light as he is in the light,
then we have fellowship with one another,
and the Blood of his Son Jesus cleanses us from all sin.
If we say, “We are without sin,”
we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just
and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing.
If we say, “We have not sinned,” we make him a liar,
and his word is not in us.
My children, I am writing this to you so that you may not commit sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ the righteous one. He is expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world.”
REMINDER
Don’t forget that “tomorrow” decision you’re carrying around with you far too long; just give your head a good shake, steady your nerves, and put that item on your “to do” list for today and bring it all to Jesus!