Unworthy Thoughts

Am I the only person who has struggled with some of the things Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount? The one that always was hard for me was the idea that thinking the sin was just as bad as doing the sin...you know what I'm talking about. "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery; but I say to you that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart." and "You have heard that the ancients were told, 'You shall not commit murder' and 'Whoever commits murder shall be liable in court.' But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court" (NAS, Matthew 5:27-28, 21-22a).

God really gave me some insight into that whole idea over the past few days with the great passport mystery! If you read yesterday's blog you know about the whole passport thing,one of the things I wrote was that I remembered thinking I should hide Chelsea's passport and then not really remembering what I did with it. Well, apparently I did not actually follow through on my not very nice thoughts about hiding it. The passport was found yesterday under Chelsea's bed. I realize that I probably took it upstairs and laid it on her bed with all the rest of her stuff (you know, the stuff that accumulates downstairs when she doesn't want to make trips up to the third floor) and I was probably pretty irritated when I did it. I'm pretty confident it wasn't exactly done with a heart full of love and affection, more likely one full of anger and resentment, so in a lot of ways my sin was totally within my thought life rather than in my actions. But...I've felt pretty guilty about my attitude both that day and the general unforgiveness I'd been showing Chelsea about her earlier passport mishandling. The stress and anxiety of not having the passport brought those feelings to the front. The Holy Spirit has been convicting me of my "thought sin" ever since the passport has been missing. He has used this little incident to teach me about sins you think rather than do and prompting me to confess those sins to Chelsea in particular. Not a bad lesson to take from a silly lost passport.

That said...I'm still really happy we found the passport, no police report, no lines at the Embassy, no delay in going home! God cares about the little things as well as the big ones! Oh...and I have to confess I'm not the one who found it. My cleaning lady Jocelyn found it and I'm very grateful to her too!