I'd spent the whole day with her. She'd corrected me about everything. Nothing I did or said was right. All day I conceded, just to keep the peace, even when I knew I was right. I hate confrontation.
Then I blew it.
It started out innocent enough. We were talking about how hard it is to run in and out of our favorite coffee shop. I said it was because they had four handicap parking spots, but she insisted there were no handicap parking on that side of the road.
No, you're wrong!
No, I'm right!
You're wrong!
I'm right!
Wrong!
Right!
Silently gritting my teeth, I turned the car around heading directly for that coffee shop. Enough was enough! We slowly drove down the street counting the handicap parking spaces.
1 - 2 - 3 - 4
I was right!She looked at me with deep hatred in her eyes and venom spewing from her lips.
"Why?
Why did you have to do that?
Why did you HAVE to prove me wrong?"
I drove her home in silence - we were no longer on speaking terms.
It's funny how we want to be right, we need to be right and we HAVE to be right especially when we feel or think we're right. To be proven wrong is a heavy blow to the ego. When the truth comes out the relationship is severed. I couldn't make things right. I couldn't bring back the peace. I had hurt her feelings.
I was thinking about that this morning when I read some powerful verses in Romans. If God didn't show our wrongness then we would continue thinking we were right.
Sin is wrong no matter how much we think it's right. Sin severs our closeness with God. It's the Great Divorce: no more intimacy, no more relationship and the only thing remaining is emptiness.
By intention and design God turns all this wrongness in to right, in His eyes. He establishes a way of reconciliation where there was no other way. Not once, but every time we come to Him in faith. The cost was made out in blood. No measure of good deeds or money can make things right.
He did it for real.
He did it for love.
He did it for relationship.
He didn't have to do it.
With our yielded hearts and open hands He turns our wrongs into right, so we can have His perfect peace in a world of such turmoil. We are made right in His eyes. We are on speaking terms.
Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Psalm 32:1 (NIV)
But now...the righteousness of God has been disclosed...the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by His blood, effective through faith..it was to prove at the present time that He Himself is righteous and that He justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. Romans 3:21-26 (NRS)
